Voltron and the Social Media Super-Presence

A few weeks back, I compared platform independent strategy to Voltron. Unsurprisingly, this resonated with the Tumblr community in some small way.

Earlier today, I realized Voltron is actually the best metaphor for the social web. Or at least the most awesome.

Everyone who is active on the social web is, for all intents and purposes, a Voltron analogue. We’re complete identities built piece by piece on platforms that are self-contained, pre-designed sub-units of personality. We share links on del.icio.us, photos on Flickr, personal details on Facebook, our life stories and ideas on LiveJournal, Wordpress and Tumblr, our thoughts and conversations on Twitter, and our location on BrightKite or Google Latitude. Taking all of these services together, and collecting the profiles into one set of information, each of us already has a super-presence to control, stronger than the sum of its parts.

Tying into my last post, there is an inherent weakness in being a social media Voltron. The super-presence you develop is dependent on dozens of companies remaining solvent, keeping your best interests at heart, and resisting the urge to sell your personal information for use in targeting advertisements. Being dependent of services or platforms that you don’t own can mean that a central hub for your online identity can collapse at a moments notice, leaving your super-presence lacking a key element. In other words, be careful who you decide to let form the head.