Perceptint Musings

Just a question to anyone reading this. How do you feel about the continued growth of social networking/media outlets? 

Social networking sites are still growing like crazy. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Bebo, Ning, and a number of other well known social sites continue to grow and spread their influence.

My issue is this. It feels awkward moving from platform to platform and “reacquainting myself” with my connections. Here’s how my experience has gone so far. I’m interested to hear back from others to see how it’s gone for you.

I knew starting my own business that I’d have to get serious about using the sites I already knew about and had either joined and lagged on or never joined but knew I needed to. LinkedIn, followed by Facebook felt very safe and easy to dabble in.

LinkedIn put be back in touch with a number of colleagues that I’d always liked to have stayed in touch with. Facebook presented me the option to reconnect with friends and find new colleagues in the digital marketing world. I knew where people were working, what their kids looked like, and had a good idea of how deep their knowledge ran on 12 question movie quizzes.

So then I get an invite to Plaxo from a good friend and I want to respond. Then I need to setup my connections in Plaxo to see who’s there. Then I have to give it access to my Hotmail, Gmail, LinkedIn, COBRA insurance forms, etc. And there are so many people on each of the various sites that you pretty much always choose the generic “hi I’m here now too - please recognize our previous connections and reaffirm here again today that nothing has changed in the last six weeks” email.

Anyways, that’s my quick take on the last six months. I’m finding real value in using Facebook to make professional connections and LinkedIn to find business people. I don’t know that I can commit to managing too many more social profiles. I’m interested by Twitter, but don’t have the patience for IM news. I like fast, but not so fast I can barely digest it fast.

As a marketing advocate, I have to know about all of the various social outlest, but as a user, I find myself gravitating towards just a few.

What’s your take? Do you feel any of these feelings or can you not get enough? I’d love to discuss.