I’m a terrible user of social media. Although I find the concept interesting, I rarely update my accounts. I guess I’m assuming that the links I find are from “standard” blogs and websites, so everyone else has already seen them too. Aside from that limitation, I just realized another issue while signing up for Daily Booth. There are so many social sites out there now. How can I post to all of them? Should I always post to all of them? What content goes on which sites?
If I want to post a picture to the Internet, I can post it to Daily Booth, flickr, twitpic, or facebook. The options for images are still slightly limited. However, if I want to post a textual message instead, then my options are almost endless: tons of blogging services (Blogger, tumblr, Posterous, WordPress), more socially oriented options (facebook & myspace), and more limited options (twitter) just to name a few.
Some of these choices are obvious. Facebook, at least for me, is less professional and more friend oriented. Flickr is better suited for galleries and groups of photos as opposed to single images. If I have a lot to say I might use this blog, but otherwise twitter is quicker and easier.
As a potential social Internet user, I am now getting caught up in the overload of service options. It’s no longer just the intimidation of putting my ideas out there or writers block of coming up with interesting content, I may actually be limited by the choice of which funnels to pour my content into. APIs offer some help with this dilemma since we can now repost our message across many of these services just by clicking a few checkboxes. On the other hand, I personally get peeved when I see identical content replicated across sites in what I sometimes feel is a waste of my time and “stream” space.
Time will tell and a solution will probably sort itself out in the next few years. I guess in the mean time, I’ll just feel guilty for underusing some services and misusing others.
