A couple of weeks ago, a friend sent me an invite to Google+. I like new things, tend to be pretty Google-centric in my life on the Web (still consider Gmail one of the best things to ever happen to me), so I signed up and built a circle around some familiar early adopters. And, once the buzz of my green badge of inclusion started to wear off, the realities associated with integrating yet another social network into my life sunk in.
Anyone who knows me knows I’m Twitter-centric in this space. That is where I spend the most time, have the strongest and most meaningful relationships and derive the greatest satisfaction and value, on many levels. Twitter is home, but suddenly I find myself with an expanding array of relatively disconnected vacation properties – all of which involve start-up costs, ongoing care and feeding and the occasional flooded basement.
These are all good and useful services that benefit me in some way, otherwise they wouldn’t be Firefox bookmarks or icons on the screen of my iPhone, I’m just finding it increasingly difficult to ignore the sprawl, and I never even made the jump to the (reportedly) king of all time sucks - Facebook.
Twitter is primary, but my secondary options on any given day include Instagram, Foursquare, Tumblr, LinkedIn, SoundTracking and – most recently – Google+. This is only scratching the surface of possibilities, I know, and does not include e-mail (work and personal), RSS, catching up on Instapaper, the burgeoning universe of social music services and the person who might actually be sitting next to me here in the real world.
Fred Wilson has written eloquently on the importance of being present for those most important in your life, so has Henry Blodget, and they’re not talking about DMs, check-ins or LinkedIn recommendations.
To be honest, I don’t even know how to use Google+ yet. It feels cool and clean and functional, and obviously it’s become much easier to find people on there over the last week or so, but I haven’t really jumped in and I’m not sure how I’m going to find the time or inclination to get there. Quality, functionality, ease of use and great design rises – better is better – but capitalizing on better in a fragmented space requires investment. I have one car that gets me where I need to go. If I want to drive 10 miles, I don’t do the first three in one vehicle, then switch for the next two, switch again, and again, and finally get to my destination. Social media is starting to feel like that.
The other underlying issue here is that these are interesting networks that are imperfectly integrated, to say the least. It’s a pleasant surprise when the work is done for you (looking at you, admiringly, SoundTracking) but that’s the exception, not the rule. Very few of my Twitter followers do the same on Instagram, Foursquare or Tumblr, and even though there are ways to cross-pollinate content (@brianstelter does this as well as anyone I’ve ever seen) the groups, and the experiences, are fundamentally distinct and live most perfectly in their own silos.
Just a few years ago, the question was whether or not someone had made the jump into using social media. Today, virtually anyone who is any degree of connected or aware is active in one form or another, so the question becomes where and when? Champions of social networks are fond of saying these platforms let you choose your friends and follows, the people you would want to talk to at a party. But with the explosion of options it’s like the people at the party are color-coded, and if you’re not on the right service at the right time they may as well show up as translucent profiles that can’t be reached or heard, even if you had wanted to say something.
Is having too many ways to connect better, or worse, than not connecting at all? What should this moment be, a Tweet? A geotagged Instagram photo or maybe just a Foursquare check-in with a tip. If it gets too long it will have to be a Tumblr post, of course maybe I’ll just SoundTrack a song. What channel will see what, and who an I connected to where, again?
I don’t presume to know where this is going, maybe some of these integration issues will be solved by acquisitions or natural selection, maybe there really will be “winners” in these mass platforms and these fragmentation/time investment challenges will work themselves out. But there’s no getting around the significant effort and attention required today to explore and participate in social media across an expanding universe.
Smart and innovative people have great ideas, and they want to build and offer apps and platforms that do neat things and bring people together in interesting ways, but one thing is absolutely certain – no one will ever build one capable of putting more hours in a day.
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