Instagram - why this is the new platform of the future

Yes, Instagram (IG) is the new place to be 

 

Here is the little poem:

Facebook days are over, 

tumblr is dying, 

soup.io is dead already 

tsu.co has died too 

diaspora never really took off, 

myspace has become a meme 

 

why is Instagram the new shiny platform where everybody wants to be?

 - no friend limits 

- the big influencers are there 

- it is super fast, super 'in your face' 

- the interactions are easy and very much encouraged 

- a picture is worth a 1000 words 

- there are tons of contents everyday 

Now there are restrictions, weird decisions too 

- the Instagram mobile application is the way to go if you are using instagram via a browser, some features are missing no upload are possible, which is like the number one feature for this app 

- zero tolerance for nudity, and the IG police is really tough many famous influencers have lost their account because of a particular photo - that was considered 'lewd' and there are no way to get the account back - the new account restart from scratch many have fled the platform just because of this 

- the IG platform belongs to facebook - so, people fleeing facebook, because of their privacy policy are actually staying withing this toxic social media manner to collect data and sell them to marketers 

- many e-girls are there promoting their onlyfan ; but it is subtle (or sometime not) 

- lots of message spam - with weird url are sent to you daily - 

 

soupBackup.java (a backup solution for soup.io)

A backup solution to complete the cycle

After I explained that soup.io could be used to mirror (backup) a tumblr account here http://alashazam.blogspot.com/2014/11/tumblr-backup-solution.html
The idea to backup a soup.io account started to be a logical step.
After some research I found some - but none of them worked (mostly because they required additional libraries I could never found, or because there were obsolete or simply too old)

The existing solutions

Here they are : Soup.io Export Tools
soup official post -- have seen various laments about this not working, so. probably not working.

This is the official way to export (backup) your soup account and the result is a huge (depending on your account - mine was like 2.3MB) rss file - which is in fact an xml file - where all the posts are stored, except for the medias (pictures mostly)

backup script by @neingeist
A shell script (which requires xsltproc installed) - the author says on his github page that it doesn't work - pass

lua script by @severak
need lua (and some libraries like "parsers.dkjson" and "socket.http" which I could never found) - pass

soupIO downloader by @falk
This one was interesting but same requires additional libraries - "fs", "lazy", "async" and "http" couldn't find most of them - pass

download tool by @moebius
rar file not found - resulting in an error

backup to wordpress by @tiefpunkt
Not wanted to install a wordpress, on top of a tumblr, on top of a soup ... maybe I'll try one day .. just for fun.

A new backup solution in java

The idea was to start from the official export tools - generate the rss file then use that file to backup all the medias (store in the xml in the tag named "enclosure")
the java source is just doing that - it reads the rss file, look for the tag name, then start a download for each instance and that's it.

Where is the source : https://bitbucket.org/ever3st/soupbackup

Usage is simple : after downloading the soupBackup.java you can compile it on your machine with "javac soupBackup.java" or you can download that file from the bitbucket repository - or use the soupBackup.jar.
read the readme file for more details.

$ java soupBackup your-rss-file.rss

or

$ java -jar soupBackup.jar your-rss-file.rss

And then you will have to wait for all the files to be downloaded, which I repeat might take some time.

I've tested this program on my own soup.io account - and with small subset of that rss file.

The pro : it works,I've tested it this week, doesn't requires weird library - and java is pretty common - so feel free to change the code for your needs.
One of the cool upgrade that might be done, would be to add a filechooser to select the rss file, then ask for backup after a certain date (that would allow to use this backup solution from times to times to catch up on the new posts).

The cons : be careful it is an early version and might contains some bugs.

Tumblr backup solution

How to backup your tumblr

As of today there are several solutions provided to backup a tumblr account - but either you need to sign up, pay and then download an application, or install browser add-ons and then you will have a lot of html files (e.g:  http://boutofcontext.com/tumblr_backup.php) - and it isn't really dynamic - you will have to backup it up from times to times, but there is a better way ...

A smart way to backup your tumblr with soup.io

In a previous post I was mentioning soup.io as a micro-blogging platform - there is actually a way to mirror your tumblr into a soup.io - and here's how :

Create a soup.io account - then go into Automatic imports and put your tumblr name.
Then press add and wait - this could take a long time, so don't close the tab, or interrupt the process, otherwise you will have duplicates post all over the place.

More than backup a synchronization

It just works!
Check for yourself : 

• http://ev3.soup.io/
• http://ev3.tumblr.com/

Source for the article : http://crumbler.tumblr.com/post/50828785541/how-to-backup-your-tumblr-blog

Microblogging platform review

What is this, and why does it exist?

Microblogging or tumblelog is that (relatively) new trendy type of social website (social .. yes, but not quite like facebook) where you have this never ending stream of pictures, video, quotes, or texts - where you can reblog, like or share and add new content.

For the "content creator" it's way faster than writing long articles on the "traditional" platform like blogger.com or wordpress.com and microblogging serves the purpose of having a hand on the pulse of the internet, much like twitter but with more emphasis on pictures and videos. That's why you can also find #hashtags on tumbleblog. And the reblogging is an even faster way to share content that will snowball and could actually in matter of hours spread all over the interwebs.

For the "surfer" - the fun part about microblogging is that selection of blog you select and will follow and which will merge with the current stream of informations and give you that unique personalized content you will be scrolling endlessly everyday - a very important tool in the procrastinator arsenal.

While facebook is for connecting with friends, and family - tumbleblog are more like a way to connect with like minded people, writers, cosplayers, freelances, comics artists, comedians, spiritual teacher etc ...

Some examples, okay ...

The most famous platform is (probably) tumblr.com - so famous in fact, that it has this "aura" of pillar of the internet (along with 4chan, reddit, twitter and facebook).

But it's not the only one, there's soup.io  quite popular in central Europe, Germany and Austria.

There's also diaspora which is a platform that from the beginning has a priority on privacy and respect for the user (for those who don't trust facebook or google+)

In my experience every of these platform had a quite difficult time in their beginning  - when users were constantly having errors and couldn't post because of server's errors and whatnot.

NB : The first time I discovered the tumbleblog concept was with the now defunct meme.yahoo.com  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Meme for more details) - it seems like they had a different strategy in mind because later they bought tumblr.com

Which is like usual saying something on the quality of the platform - the importance, isn't in the technology or the ease of use, but really in the number of people connecting, using and interacting with it. For people that don't know what I'm talking about they should look for the rise and fall of myspace.com.