Earlier this week Ping.FM quietly closed it’s doors to new accounts and has started to migration over to Seesmic.com. Before you fly on down to leave a RIP comment let me give you a little insight on what appears to be happening.
Liking the bad bird jokes yet? Hold tight there may be more!
For those of you who don’t know what Ping.FM is, let me enlighten you. This site was a powerful gateway of sorts to allow you to syndicate your content to many different social bookmarking and high ranking web 2.0 sites. It was a beautiful free simple thing.
Why do I say was… because it seems that the new free version of ping is a vastly reduced, from 25 shares sites down to 4. Seesmic will be adding two monthly paid services as well. More info about these changes can be found here.
For those who are current members of Ping.fm you can continue to enjoy this free service for the next couple of weeks. Then the doors are closed for ever.
Ping.FM er Seesmic vs Onlywire
Ping.FM is not the only social bookmaking gateway. Onlywire.com also has a great service of allowing it’s members to share content across multiple social share sites. Oh and Onlywire has a free service 200 shares a month and luckily for you (if your budget conscious) a couple of monthly paid services. Yeah for more expenses right? It does appear that Only just upped their cost for the paid plans too.
Well before you start molting over all this lets quickly explore the benefits aka back links aka social proof. In order to have a good content syndication strategy you need to leverage the right tools to get your content out there. And these sites like ping and onlywire do just that.
Now we all know the social media landscape changes just as fast as the weather. But the same simple ebb and flow process like; know who your target audience is, create good quality content they want, share said good quality content and attract more quality customers is not going anywhere.
So over the next several posts we’ll explore more tools and sites that allow you to get your content plastered all over the blogosphere and social sites and build you as a content syndication ROCK STAR.
Me llamo
Ken Pickard
aka “The Network Dad”
Content syndication is my game and I’m playing full out! If you are ready to play full out as well and want to keep up with what I’m about to put out to join the list!
P.S. I said there could be more bird yokes but I didn’t say they were going to be any better. But your syndication plan is no joke. So stay tuned for more updates on what’s working and what’s not working.
And with that being said, tell the community what your favorite syndication strategy or website is. Were you using Ping.FM? Will you be looking for a replacement?
Hey thanks for the update Ken
I enjoyed using Ping. Fm. I am also currently using both of their mobile apps for the iPhone. The first is Seesmic, which has a 4 pane user dashboard. You can monitor 3 social sites direct from the app such as your Twitter and Facebook timelines. The fourth pane was dedicated to Ping.Fm with all of your social profiles you’ve previously added.
So mobile updating to these sites was just a few swipes away. I guess with the changes you spoke of this app. may also be going the way of the Dodo.
Their second mobile app is called Seesmic Ping. This app doesn’t allow as many social portals. I believe currently its available for Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, and Tumblr
Seesmic Ping does have a few good features that the Seesmic app above doesn’t:
-you can add your Facebook fan-pages
-you have the ability to schedule updates for later
-you can add photos to send
-and finally it has a link shorten-er that doesn’t use up your posting character limits.
The bad is that I keep getting error messages saying I’m over the posting limit on certain accounts like Twitter. Hmmm I should really look into that….
Anyway great post Ken. I’m starting to use Onlywire. So far its pretty good. Thanks again for the update.
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Steve,
Thank you for all the great info. I’m not as tech savy, but I do like to use the right tools for the right job.
I’ve seen quite a few people talk about the mobile connections to their websites and being able to do a lot of work from their phone. I’m a bit old fashioned when it comes to the mobile connections for all this. I guess it’s the screen size of my monitor I’m used to. Although I’ll start transitioning over soon enough.
I love all the tools that allow us to share more, but one of my pet peeves is so much of a good thing and you can loose focus of the bigger picture. To my that’s building connections and relationships. And that’s another issue for another post…coming soon!
Ken
It’s been a bit, so I thought I would drop by. Sucks to see Ping go though, Seesmic are greedy bastards. Anyhoo, take care of you
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Dustin,
Thanks for stopping by. It has been a while since our last chat and as usual your timing is perfect. We need to connect soon.
Yes Seesmic is looking a little money hungry like Onlywire.
Ken
Hey Ken,
I use to use Ping.fm but it all of a sudden stopped posting to some of the sites I had set up. Facebook was one of them and I tried finding out what was going on in their support and they never got back with me. It really ticked me off so I quit using them.
I had heard that OnlyWire didn’t offer their free service any longer. I know a few people who haven’t been too thrilled with their paid service either so I’ve stayed away from them.
Will look forward to your scoop on these sites and which ones are best. You always give us the goods Ken.
~Adrienne
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Adrienne,
Yes Ping did get a little temperamental some times. It still worked well and for a free service it was worth it’s weight in gold! Seriously, I liked it and leveraged it quite a bit. Bad timing for our RSS feed Syndication, but I have a solution I’m looking into.
Onlywire seems to be getting a bit greedy lately though. But since I have mine set for Tribe Pro I’ll keep it. There really doesn’t seem to be that perfect system that’s flawless. Each one takes a little tweaking now and then. So many changes to keep up with is kind of hard to know what’s what. That’s why I’ll be digging into each one and sharing whats what.
Have an awesome weekend
Ken
Hey Ken, thanks for the heads up. Personally, I didn’t use that system. But now you have my curiosity about onlywire. I’m always on the social networks, maybe I should check this out to make life a little easier.
I like your analogy and I must confess I am molting over this one.
-Donna
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Thanks for the update Ken. I use to use them for a while, but their site wasn’t very user friendly and I didn’t know what I was doing anyway. LOL! It’s funny how so many of these services start out free and then turn to paid offers. I currently use another plugin now, and this time I understand its features.
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Thanks for the update and education, Ken… it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Nice to get this from someone who understands the landscape and can give us a clear picture of what may/may not happen.
Appreciate you, my friend!
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Hi Ken, thanks for the heads up about ping.fm I don’t use it myself but I recommend it and even mention it in a few of my videos. Now I have to go back and add some annotations to the vids letting people know about onlywire.
I use Twitterfeed on one of my twitter accounts but only for a small number of blog feeds.
Have you tried IfTTT? I hear that one is pretty cool but I didn’t get a chance to set it up.
Thanks for the post Ken and have a great weekend.
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Hi Ken,
Thanks for the updates. I had actually never used Ping.FM but I may go and take a look at the other you mentioned. I guess those tools just come and go, so better not getting too much attached
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This is interesting Ken,
I was using Onlywire’s ‘Free’ service, but according to what I understand, it was limited to a total of 300 posts (not 200 a month) so I ponied up for a paid plan.
Will be awaiting your follow up…
Tom
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Tom,
You definitely get out of it what you put into it. If you’re using Onlywire for just your own content syndication that’s one thing. But if you’re using it for Tribe Pro, which syndicates others, then your shares can go up pretty quick. Ans like anything else it takes time to get the momentum going. Multiple exposures and all that. What other tools are you using for syndication?
Ken