When does online social networking become too much?

The other day I was showing a client twitterfeed, one of the many twitter applications that can be used to automate a person's twitter account. Twitterfeed allows you to put the rss feed for your blogs into twitter so that every time you post it automatically sends that post to your twitter network. This is a useful functionality, but as I looked at the twitterfeed application, I realized the feed could also be sent to ping.fm, identica, and textme. I recall thinking at the time, "That's three more social networking applications I need to know so I can instruct my clients about them." Fast forward to today. I finally got around to exploring these applications and quickly discovered that these applications were essentially a different form of twitter, done in different colors, but ultimately very redundant, and worse, much more complicated to get set up on, as compared to twitter. Text me, for example tries to get me to specify if I'm posting to family, friends, or colleagues and when I try to set my feed up on twitterfeed for it, I can't because I'm unable to provide that specification. Ping.FM requires an authentication code, which after searching for about fifteen minutes, I give up on finding, because I have better things to do with my day to spend it trying to figure out technology interfaces which are hopelessly complicated. I have no doubt that if I spent a lot of time with these technologies I could figure them out and have an active profile on these social networking tools. I may even check back in a month or two in the hopes that the technology has been simplified. But in the meantime, I'm left asking a couple of questions: When does online social networking become too much? and How many types of similar social networking sites do we need, before we recognize the redundancy of said sites? The first question may draw gasps and cries of blasphemy, because online social networking is a pretty buzz heavy set of words for business marketing right now. I actually offer public presentations and teach classes on how to use online social networking to market and grow your business. However, while I do think online social networking is an important and viable way of marketing your business and acknowledge that it is important to keep up on the latest social networking technology, I also think there's a fine line between maintaining a viable online presence and spending too much time on online social networking sites, while ignoring other facets of your business. The second question feeds directly into the first, because it asks the vital question of just how many sites do we need, before we recognize the redundancy of said sites. I have no doubt that text me and ping.fm have people utilizing their sites, but having looked at those sites today, what stood out to me, beyond the fact that the user interface was overly complicated was that I was essentially looking at another Twitter technology. I already spend a fair amount of time on twitter, but I'm not sure I could justify spending the same time on these other sites, which seem to provide the same service and yet likely can't offer the same simplicity that twitter offers. As people who are seeking to do business with others we do need to incorporate online social networking tools and technology into our business toolboxes. The fact is that such technologies are becoming more and more relevant to a wide variety of potential clientele. Myspace, long thought to be the domain of teenagers and musical bands, is now becoming popular for the baby boomers. Facebook, linkedin, and Biznik are all relevant sites that can allow us to connect with people we might otherwise never meet. But all of these sites are only as effective as the amount of business they generate. It's true that they are networking sites, but all that networking, at some point, needs to pay off. And if it doesn't then these sites just become another way for you to promote your hobby as opposed to your business. Online social networking becomes too much when we spend more time trying to insure an online presence for our activities and end up neglecting the other equally important aspects of running a business. It becomes too much when we spend all our time on online forums answering questions, but not necessarily generating business from answering those questions. And it becomes too much when we can't effectively automate the technology enough so that we can maintain a presence, but also have enough time to focus on running our businesses and most importantly actually have time to live life. Remember to keep a reasonable balance when it comes to online social networking. Don't get so caught up in the buzz that you forget to maintain a presence in your offline life as well. Use online social networking to make connections and do business, but use it as just one tool among many...not more important or better than any other tool you would use to help you sustain and run your business.    2009-03-14T18:41:15Z

2009-03-15T19:35:14Z