So recently Greg was ruminating on how to manage social networks. He discussed the issue of one-way intimacy and who to approve. So in essence controlling the social network he exists in (wouldn’t that be nice in real life too?). I think the issue of what makes a social network and how to participate is really another blog post in itself. So I’ll leave that alone for now. But while I have a love/hate relationship with the many social networks I’m involved in, I am struggling to make them work for and with me. Not me working for them!
The issue I’m dealing with is how to manage so many different friends, different types of friends (colleague, friend, family), on a plethora of social networking sites. I have so many different places to update, keep on on, etc. It can be overwhelming, even if just from a user name/password issue. This morning I was reading a NYT Article on a way to keep up with all of this “noise.” Friends May Be the Best Guide Through the Noise mentioned a way gather all the user-generated content into one manageable stream using FriendFeed.
But they all followed one another’s activities in one place: a buzzy, online water cooler called FriendFeed that lets people funnel all their online activities into a single information broadcast, and then blast that broadcast to anyone who wants to listen in.
I hope to check this out this week and report on it…
I’m on FriendFeed, but never really use it. The vast majority of the content coming through is from Twitter, which I can follow better elsewhere. I’m not really that interested in a stream of links from other services (Youtube, del.icio.us, etc.) that my network thinks is important, but where the person hasn’t actually told me why. So it doesn’t really add any value for me. Just gives me even more stuff (read: noise) to look at with less context.
I’ve been invited to Friend Feed but have not tried it. If anyone does I’d be curious to hear what it’s like. I’ll admit I am overwhelmed by all this social networking. Does anyone really care what I’m doing right now? I guess not I only have 2 followers on twitter
I signed up for friendfeed a while ago, but I’m not hooked on it. It does indeed consolidate everything everyone is doing, but yikes, that’s way too much activity for me. Still, I haven’t played with it much to see if you can limit what parts of your friends lifestreams you can block out. If you can use it to set up groups and then just select what you want updates you to see, that could be great.