14 ms·

Own Your Identity

226 points by thisisblurry 15y ago

BrianBerk 15y ago
As he mentions in the post, this is from one of the creators of Tumblr, who's elevator pitch at this point is "a social network that gives users control of their identity". It is one of the easiest ways for someone to practice what he's preaching. Still, the people who are converting everything over to Google+ aren't crazy (well, they are a little bit, no search and no RSS is kinda a big deal). The design of G+, particularly the permalink pages, does a good job of making the first thing you see the actual content, not the fact that it is on G+.
- starnix17 15y ago
  Also worth noting, he's no longer using Tumblr for Marco.org: http://www.marco.org/secondcrack http://www.marco.org/secondcrack
  - VengefulCynic 15y ago
    And, as discussed in his podcast - Build and Analyze http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/18 http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/18 (ep. 18), this has nothing to do with Marco developing a sudden aversion to Tumblr and everything to do with his desire to be able to roll his own CMS as he has been doing since far before that CMS turned into Tumblr.
    - starnix17 15y ago
      Ah, correct, this makes more sense now.
  - tommi 15y ago
    Funny. "30 reasons you'll love Tumblr" says: "Custom domains Use your own domain name. Turn marco.tumblr.com into www.marco.org"
william42 15y ago
Going to post this here, since it seems relevant to tumblr discussion: http://spinor.tumblr.com/post/7113243594/decentralized-tumblr http://spinor.tumblr.com/post/7113243594/decentralized-tumbl...
Fargren 15y ago
Going on a tangent, but hotmail is really good nowadays. My non-serious-mail-from-friends account is on hotmail, and it's as good as gmail, a bit better in some stuff and a bit worse in others.
- robryan 15y ago
  Yeah, hotmail just has a bad reputation because it was pretty average for a time, so people look down on others when they give out their @hotmail email address. I use it, mainly because it was what everyone used back when I created in high school. I have a gmail to but at my volume of email never really felt compelled to totally switch over.
- ImprovedSilence 15y ago
  Perhaps hotmail is fine. but to be honest, coming from the AIM generation, the biggest gmail pull for me is the fact that all my previous aim buddies are now on google chat. You might be able to tell me to move on, but i still love just siting down and doing the old "what are u doing, what are u doing" checking of statuses, that I grew up doing every day in high school and college... yeah FB and twitter took some of that, but I tend to have smaller, tighter circles of friends, and g-chat is still one of the best ways I keep up with close friends (fb and twitter are more "aquantiences" than friends u could say) now scattered all over the globe. And they are all there. game. set. match. google.
  - Fargren 15y ago
    Well, I live in Argentina and here the default chat application is MSN. Since MSN from hotmail's page works exactly as good as gtalk from gmail, the reason you us gmail is aprt of the reason I use hotmail.
- ctide 15y ago
  I still have a hotmail account that I check periodically, and while it may be ok in IE, it's a terrible experience in Chrome. All the AJAX interface is really slow to the point where you can easily end up deleting messages that aren't even the message that you're currently viewing. I have no idea how it is in Firefox, but, I don't care enough about my Hotmail account to bother using a different browser for it.
kefs 15y ago
http://www.kevinrose.com/ http://www.kevinrose.com/ should read this.
- robryan 15y ago
  That is almost a counter example though, he has 32000 people in circles while g+ is still quiet limited. If g+ was to go away he could easily redirect the domain and build his core following back up fairly quickly. This of course is a lot different for say a company that has worked very hard building up something like a Facebook following that while susceptible to marketing messages aren't likely to go out of their way to follow the company to whatever online presences they create.
russnewcomer 15y ago
It's not just individuals that need to own their identity. I work with small businesses and have helped numerous clients move from @aol.com or @hotmail.com addresses to their own domains. And it's not just businesses, either. I have worked in third-world countries and seen governments print "countryforeignerregistration@yahoo.com" on official documents. The only reason I don't own my identity online is that I've been too cheap to pay for domain registration. And that's an ever less meaningful excuse.
- zobzu 15y ago
  unfortunately having a domain is not enough you have to be on twitter maybe youll have to be on g+ sometime soon too then you dont own it anymore additionally, ive always worried about the fact that the dns registar generally own your dns and just let you use it for a fee.
  - sixtofour 15y ago
    Yes, for some reason we say we "own" our domains, but I always seem to have to renew my lease.
    - zobzu 15y ago
      its funny that i get minus karma for this post lol. but yeah id prefer some decentralized dns system where i would own my domain somehow well then again, dns depends also on static ips which we dont really own. with ipv6 we can be one step closer to owning the ip without being an isp however. can also setup rdns more easily.
      - icebraining 15y ago
        >dns depends also on static ips. Not really, there's dynamic DNS. My home connection has a dynamic (well, semi-static) IP, so I use a dynamic DNS provider and a small monitoring utility to auto-update the IP when it changes.
mmaunder 15y ago
I wonder if TLD's will ever be perceived as government lock-in e.g. bit.ly, ow.ly, 3.ly are at the whims of Libya and yourname.com is subject to US legislation and enforcement. Great post and 100% agree.
- qq66 15y ago
  Unfortuantely, we are all very vulnerable to malfeasance by governments, especially our own. Governments have done far worse things to their citizens than revoke their domains.
nikcub 15y ago
'owning it' doesn't mean your own domain. you are only leasing that domain name until you either no longer pay for it or the government in control feels you no longer deserve access to it.
- mapgrep 15y ago
  While you hit on a genuine problem, there are far fewer legal barriers to Google, Facebook, Twitter or Microsoft terminating your account than for US ICE to seize your .com and .org; ICE needs a warrant for seizure and more to retain indefinitely. Further, you can always get a non U.S. domain, e.g. .ch (Swiss) as used by Wikileaks.
  - lloeki 15y ago
    That's unless you live in a country where it's becoming commonplace to filter out DNS. I'm honestly hesitant to have my online identity be obliterated at a whim by some reckless government of mine (France); they won't seize my dotsomething, but they will legally be able to block it out of existence, nationwide, without even the order from a judge. In that case, there are actually more legal barriers to Google terminating my gmail account on my government behalf than being blacklisted.
- edanm 15y ago
  That's a little sensationalist, don't you think? What are the chances "the government" takes away your domain name? It's happened to an incredibly small percentage of domain-owners, I would guess.
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    It's not the point that the chance is low. The point is that there is any chance at all. No government should be allowed to seize domains. Ever.
    - edanm 15y ago
      That's just as sensationalist. Most people agree that there is a balance between the rights of individuals to do what they want, and the rights of the government to stop them if society benefits. For example, almost everyone agrees that the police shouldn't have unlimited power to search anyone they want. But almost no one argues that they should have no power to search people - just that a balance needs to be struck.
spodek 15y ago
Take his arguments farther and you reach Eben Moglen's (co-creator of free software licenses) goal of the FreedomBox, which would enable all to own all their data currently in the cloud. The project is getting started. It's bold and far-reaching, but so was a free encyclopedia anyone could edit. This page http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox gives more background and the videos it links to are inspirational. If you agree with owning your identity, you may like what you read.
BenS 15y ago
One of the most valuable parts of an online identity is the attention you receive from other people. Social networks make getting attention more efficient. In this way, proprietary tools do a lot to enrich your online identity. For me, this is a great tradeoff. For example, I'm happy to put my pictures on Facebook because my family and friends see those pictures and leave comments that I enjoy. In comparison, my local copies feel like those dusty old photo albums in my parents' basement that nobody ever opens.
mise 15y ago
My issue is not being able to decide which domain name to use. My surname is complicated for people unfamiliar with it.
- khafra 15y ago
  Buy your name and the common misspellings?
dvdhsu 15y ago
Interesting that he mentions Hotmail. Hotmail addresses are indeed notorious for their lack of permanence. Last time I checked, if you do not log in for 270 days, your account is deleted, and your username is up for grabs. [1] If somebody else were to come along and take your username, they could easily gain access to your passwords that can be restored restored via e-mail, as well as your whole online identity. --------------- 1. http://www.redd.it/ej321 http://www.redd.it/ej321
- svat 15y ago
  Well, that's his point: if he had simply trusted the best webmail provider, he would have ended up trusting Hotmail.
masnick 15y ago
However, tumblr does not provide an easy way to export your content. This makes it not viable as a blogging platform for me.
- rglover 15y ago
  How about using the Tumblr2Wordpress tool by WooThemes? Granted, it's not the best thing but it would keep your data and you'd be able to migrate to a solution that's easily self-hosted.
- there 15y ago
  your content is in html, how is it not easy to export?
  - masnick 15y ago
    Come on. It would require non-trivial work to scrape the pages to get the html, set up parsing to handle different types of content, get into a format that could be imported into something else, etc. Not something I'm willing to spend my time setting up, and what about all the people who might want to export their tumblr content but can't program.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - icebraining 15y ago
    The problem is not the transport format - HTML is no worse than JSON or XML - it's the lack of a standard schema. For e.g. Wordpress to import Tumblr blogs they need to write an importer just for Tumblr's format, whereas if Tumblr used a standard like RSS, WP could use a generalist importer. Don't underestimate the value of standard formats; the transport mechanism (XML/JSON/HTML) is a small detail.
    - Otto42 15y ago
      Yeah, writing that importer was certainly annoying. Tumblr's formats are nutty and weird. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tumblr-importer/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tumblr-importer/

226 points by thisisblurry 15y ago

As he mentions in the post, this is from one of the creators of Tumblr, who's elevator pitch at this point is "a social network that gives users control of their identity". It is one of the easiest ways for someone to practice what he's preaching. Still, the people who are converting everything over to Google+ aren't crazy (well, they are a little bit, no search and no RSS is kinda a big deal). The design of G+, particularly the permalink pages, does a good job of making the first thing you see the actual content, not the fact that it is on G+.

starnix17 15y ago
Also worth noting, he's no longer using Tumblr for Marco.org: http://www.marco.org/secondcrack http://www.marco.org/secondcrack
- VengefulCynic 15y ago
  And, as discussed in his podcast - Build and Analyze http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/18 http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/18 (ep. 18), this has nothing to do with Marco developing a sudden aversion to Tumblr and everything to do with his desire to be able to roll his own CMS as he has been doing since far before that CMS turned into Tumblr.
  - starnix17 15y ago
    Ah, correct, this makes more sense now.
- tommi 15y ago
  Funny. "30 reasons you'll love Tumblr" says: "Custom domains Use your own domain name. Turn marco.tumblr.com into www.marco.org"

william42 15y ago

Going to post this here, since it seems relevant to tumblr discussion: http://spinor.tumblr.com/post/7113243594/decentralized-tumblr http://spinor.tumblr.com/post/7113243594/decentralized-tumbl...

Fargren 15y ago

Going on a tangent, but hotmail is really good nowadays. My non-serious-mail-from-friends account is on hotmail, and it's as good as gmail, a bit better in some stuff and a bit worse in others.

robryan 15y ago
Yeah, hotmail just has a bad reputation because it was pretty average for a time, so people look down on others when they give out their @hotmail email address. I use it, mainly because it was what everyone used back when I created in high school. I have a gmail to but at my volume of email never really felt compelled to totally switch over.
ImprovedSilence 15y ago
Perhaps hotmail is fine. but to be honest, coming from the AIM generation, the biggest gmail pull for me is the fact that all my previous aim buddies are now on google chat. You might be able to tell me to move on, but i still love just siting down and doing the old "what are u doing, what are u doing" checking of statuses, that I grew up doing every day in high school and college... yeah FB and twitter took some of that, but I tend to have smaller, tighter circles of friends, and g-chat is still one of the best ways I keep up with close friends (fb and twitter are more "aquantiences" than friends u could say) now scattered all over the globe. And they are all there. game. set. match. google.
- Fargren 15y ago
  Well, I live in Argentina and here the default chat application is MSN. Since MSN from hotmail's page works exactly as good as gtalk from gmail, the reason you us gmail is aprt of the reason I use hotmail.
ctide 15y ago
I still have a hotmail account that I check periodically, and while it may be ok in IE, it's a terrible experience in Chrome. All the AJAX interface is really slow to the point where you can easily end up deleting messages that aren't even the message that you're currently viewing. I have no idea how it is in Firefox, but, I don't care enough about my Hotmail account to bother using a different browser for it.

kefs 15y ago

http://www.kevinrose.com/ http://www.kevinrose.com/ should read this.

robryan 15y ago
That is almost a counter example though, he has 32000 people in circles while g+ is still quiet limited. If g+ was to go away he could easily redirect the domain and build his core following back up fairly quickly. This of course is a lot different for say a company that has worked very hard building up something like a Facebook following that while susceptible to marketing messages aren't likely to go out of their way to follow the company to whatever online presences they create.

russnewcomer 15y ago

It's not just individuals that need to own their identity. I work with small businesses and have helped numerous clients move from @aol.com or @hotmail.com addresses to their own domains. And it's not just businesses, either. I have worked in third-world countries and seen governments print "countryforeignerregistration@yahoo.com" on official documents. The only reason I don't own my identity online is that I've been too cheap to pay for domain registration. And that's an ever less meaningful excuse.

zobzu 15y ago
unfortunately having a domain is not enough you have to be on twitter maybe youll have to be on g+ sometime soon too then you dont own it anymore additionally, ive always worried about the fact that the dns registar generally own your dns and just let you use it for a fee.
- sixtofour 15y ago
  Yes, for some reason we say we "own" our domains, but I always seem to have to renew my lease.
  - zobzu 15y ago
    its funny that i get minus karma for this post lol. but yeah id prefer some decentralized dns system where i would own my domain somehow well then again, dns depends also on static ips which we dont really own. with ipv6 we can be one step closer to owning the ip without being an isp however. can also setup rdns more easily.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      >dns depends also on static ips. Not really, there's dynamic DNS. My home connection has a dynamic (well, semi-static) IP, so I use a dynamic DNS provider and a small monitoring utility to auto-update the IP when it changes.

mmaunder 15y ago

I wonder if TLD's will ever be perceived as government lock-in e.g. bit.ly, ow.ly, 3.ly are at the whims of Libya and yourname.com is subject to US legislation and enforcement. Great post and 100% agree.

qq66 15y ago
Unfortuantely, we are all very vulnerable to malfeasance by governments, especially our own. Governments have done far worse things to their citizens than revoke their domains.

nikcub 15y ago

'owning it' doesn't mean your own domain. you are only leasing that domain name until you either no longer pay for it or the government in control feels you no longer deserve access to it.

mapgrep 15y ago
While you hit on a genuine problem, there are far fewer legal barriers to Google, Facebook, Twitter or Microsoft terminating your account than for US ICE to seize your .com and .org; ICE needs a warrant for seizure and more to retain indefinitely. Further, you can always get a non U.S. domain, e.g. .ch (Swiss) as used by Wikileaks.
- lloeki 15y ago
  That's unless you live in a country where it's becoming commonplace to filter out DNS. I'm honestly hesitant to have my online identity be obliterated at a whim by some reckless government of mine (France); they won't seize my dotsomething, but they will legally be able to block it out of existence, nationwide, without even the order from a judge. In that case, there are actually more legal barriers to Google terminating my gmail account on my government behalf than being blacklisted.
edanm 15y ago
That's a little sensationalist, don't you think? What are the chances "the government" takes away your domain name? It's happened to an incredibly small percentage of domain-owners, I would guess.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  It's not the point that the chance is low. The point is that there is any chance at all. No government should be allowed to seize domains. Ever.
  - edanm 15y ago
    That's just as sensationalist. Most people agree that there is a balance between the rights of individuals to do what they want, and the rights of the government to stop them if society benefits. For example, almost everyone agrees that the police shouldn't have unlimited power to search anyone they want. But almost no one argues that they should have no power to search people - just that a balance needs to be struck.

spodek 15y ago

Take his arguments farther and you reach Eben Moglen's (co-creator of free software licenses) goal of the FreedomBox, which would enable all to own all their data currently in the cloud. The project is getting started. It's bold and far-reaching, but so was a free encyclopedia anyone could edit. This page http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox gives more background and the videos it links to are inspirational. If you agree with owning your identity, you may like what you read.

BenS 15y ago

One of the most valuable parts of an online identity is the attention you receive from other people. Social networks make getting attention more efficient. In this way, proprietary tools do a lot to enrich your online identity. For me, this is a great tradeoff. For example, I'm happy to put my pictures on Facebook because my family and friends see those pictures and leave comments that I enjoy. In comparison, my local copies feel like those dusty old photo albums in my parents' basement that nobody ever opens.

mise 15y ago

My issue is not being able to decide which domain name to use. My surname is complicated for people unfamiliar with it.

khafra 15y ago
Buy your name and the common misspellings?

dvdhsu 15y ago

Interesting that he mentions Hotmail. Hotmail addresses are indeed notorious for their lack of permanence. Last time I checked, if you do not log in for 270 days, your account is deleted, and your username is up for grabs. [1] If somebody else were to come along and take your username, they could easily gain access to your passwords that can be restored restored via e-mail, as well as your whole online identity. --------------- 1. http://www.redd.it/ej321 http://www.redd.it/ej321

svat 15y ago
Well, that's his point: if he had simply trusted the best webmail provider, he would have ended up trusting Hotmail.

masnick 15y ago

However, tumblr does not provide an easy way to export your content. This makes it not viable as a blogging platform for me.

rglover 15y ago
How about using the Tumblr2Wordpress tool by WooThemes? Granted, it's not the best thing but it would keep your data and you'd be able to migrate to a solution that's easily self-hosted.
there 15y ago
your content is in html, how is it not easy to export?
- masnick 15y ago
  Come on. It would require non-trivial work to scrape the pages to get the html, set up parsing to handle different types of content, get into a format that could be imported into something else, etc. Not something I'm willing to spend my time setting up, and what about all the people who might want to export their tumblr content but can't program.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- icebraining 15y ago
  The problem is not the transport format - HTML is no worse than JSON or XML - it's the lack of a standard schema. For e.g. Wordpress to import Tumblr blogs they need to write an importer just for Tumblr's format, whereas if Tumblr used a standard like RSS, WP could use a generalist importer. Don't underestimate the value of standard formats; the transport mechanism (XML/JSON/HTML) is a small detail.
  - Otto42 15y ago
    Yeah, writing that importer was certainly annoying. Tumblr's formats are nutty and weird. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tumblr-importer/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tumblr-importer/