Social Media Overload?

Since the start of MySpace to the introduction of FourSquare, it has been useful and entertaining to keep up with the various platforms of social networking. It can be noticed that each person’s use of these tools tends to only extend to two to five different types; however, hundreds of platforms, which could be considered social media tools, exist today.

Recognizing Similar Social Media Platforms

I first noticed the difficulty in having one individual tool during my time spent in Germany as an intern for the summer. At the given time, social media users I related to tended to seek out Facebook as their main form of staying connected. Without stepping back and thinking of cultural differences I assumed the same and began searching for all of my newest contacts from Germany on Facebook. This search quickly ended as less than 5% of them could be found, an unusually low number I thought. I soon found out that many of my friends were using a site called StudiVZ.com and MeinVZ, platforms that upon approval could be linked together. Members of StudiVZ had to belong to an already approved school network. All other users could join MeinVZ needing to then request users of StudiVZ to allow the connection between sites to occur. The interfacing of both of these platforms nearly mirrored that of Facebook.com, however it could be described as the “German version of Facebook” in that it mainly attracted German users and was only in the process of reaching out to other nations.

An Abundance of Social Media Tools

In beginning my research on social media it came again to my attention the abundance of available tools that I had yet to take advantage of. I was introduced to FourSquare by a friend a little over six months ago and became an avid twitter user around the beginning of 2009. Slowly, I’ve been adding platform after platform, attempting to use igoogle and TweetDeck to aggregate them all into one to ease the pressures of keeping up with each. Although each tool I used helped a little more in binding these together, it was impossible to accomplish staying updated on all of them constantly.

How Do You Balance A Healthy Variety?

Soon I came to realize: I spend more time keeping up with Social Media then I actually spend enjoying it. This poses my biggest questions: At what point do platforms decline? Will one application ever truly dominate? What is the best way to utilize Social Media and stay current without spending every moment attempting to master it? It’s easy to say that Facebook is at the top, if not the top of the list. Think then about Digg. Digg serves a purpose that Facebook hasn’t grasped full user attention on yet. Further, if a person began using Facebook the way Twitter is to be used, it is easy to say many of his or her friends would get quite aggravated seeing as that isn't the standard form of communication for Facebook . Each social media tool serves its own unique purpose that often is shared with another tool, but is mastered only by one.

Social Media Aggregates

Aggregate tools came about to help solve this problem. From experience, I can note that TweetDeck begins helping with the issues of social media overload; however, this device hinders the full capability of each device as it takes more of a “Twitter” approach to each of the connected platforms, by specializing in "status" type of updates as opposed to the complex inter-workings of sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn

Are There Solutions?

My best solution to this problem is that one day a tool will be created to best connect users to all forms of social media, from even the smallest tools with less than a hundred followers to mega platforms such as Facebook. It is either this or the decline of some of the other platforms that needs to happen before people get too overloaded with networking that they give up. A main purpose of social media is to allow organizing without the need of costly management. It can be quite beneficial in connecting our world. I see the benefits in each platform and agree that diversity is important. I do think that collaboration between platforms or some sort of aggregation can help ensure that users from all different backgrounds can still stay connected without the separation caused by the selection of one platform over another by an individual user. What do you feel needs to happen in the future to ensure it continues to support networking the way it does now?