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Creating a virtual social media network with indie websites


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The following is a feed of Chris Burns' comments from various websites, including this one.

The commenting software is provided by a company called Disqus.  Here is my Disqus main page: https://disqus.com/by/AALBC/   Disqus also allows you to provide links to other pages on your site as well as serve ads.  These are both services that Google also provides.  Google also does a better job.

The scrolling display below was created by software from a company called FeedWind.  I could do this myself, but they make it easier for anyone to do this.  If you pay $50 per year, you can remove the "Powered by Feedwind."  

I used these type of feeds on the upgraded author profiles here on AALBC.com.  Here is Christopher D. Burns (@CDBurns)  author profile page: https://aalbc.com/authors/home.php?author_name=Christopher+D.+Burns where you can see his comments as well.

My thinking is that people can users can use feeds like this to consume content created on indie websites from across the.  This is not new technology. In fact, it is pretty old.  Before the advent of the high-end cell phones with 4G connections and tons of storage, we could have information from website send directly to our cell phones and see content from websites. Before that, email programs could be configured receive updates from bloggers, news sources, or anyone who provided an RSS feed.

Today social media has taken this over.  I'm trying to take back control.

This also explains why Facebook has killed the RSS feeds they previously supplied. 

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Now that is a very nice feature. The author's page looks great!!!! Thanks Troy. I'm looking at pulling all of my books from Amazon soon and creating all of the books as eBooks or reverting to Lightning Source and re-releasing the books. I will keep you updated so that you can change your affiliate links so they won't be dead.

Thanks as always for all that you do. This is extraordinary work.

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@CDBurns , one of the enhancements to the site is that I can create customized buy links for each individual book.  So if you want me to direct readers to you, lighting source or any other place all I need is the URL.  

The cool thing is that this is something Amazon is not likely to ever do, so I have a small competitive advantage over them.

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You know it's funny. We have to use Amazon Affiliates and Amazon services because the consumer simply isn't willing to take 1-3 extra steps to find us. It's frustrating, but at least I'm really seeing the benefits of backing off of social media and working on the sight. Traffic is up considerably and growing month over month. It reminds me that in the end search still rules the day, but you knew that already. I will update you when I make a decision. Right now I'm driving the Lyft and working on the site. That's a big change over the last few years of big money. Everyday I consider opening the Amazon store back up. I haven't done it and I really am working hard to make something happen that replaces at least a fraction of the income from that channel. if I can just get 5% of the money I made there it would help. As always I will pop in and keep you posted.

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  • 2 months later...

I had to pull the Discus software off my website.  They changed it started collecting to much information from my visitors and serving unsecure content.  It was a shame I liked the software and the potential it.

 

i replaced it with some open source commenting software that is much faster, simply because it is not utilizing resources to collect your data.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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