Jason (my new boss, btw) went on a little rant yesterday about Facebook, the wall-garden effect, and the general overload of information coming from the social networking sites. This is something that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately: how do I manage all of these networks, and what benefit am I really getting out of them?

Since at this point I’m a member of too many networking sites to even begin listing (it’s a sick, sick addiction) I thought I’d talk a little bit about the few I use regularly, and what I use them for.

Facebook: I’ll talk about this one first, since it’s the one that’s giving Jason the most grief currently. I add everyone to Facebook as a friend (I’m not sure why I decided that was a good idea, but I did).filters It’s true that it can make it a tad overwhelming, but at the same time I enjoy seeing what people post, and I like getting a peek into everyone’s lives. Is that weird? The invitations and group invites are something I largely ignore, but only out of necessity – if I joined them all, it would be completely unusable. As for the email notifications, I have all of my Facebook items bypassing my inbox (they go under the *misc tag), and filtered as such it makes it easier for me to check periodically.

Facebook is only as daunting as you let it be. There’s a lot of information floating around, but with the correct filtering it can be useful.

MySpace: I only use this to keep in touch with friends back East, or from college. Most of my friends haven’t left MySpace – they use it because it’s all they know, and they have no reason to try something different. I don’t even use the email address I’m registered with there anymore, so I don’t worry about notifications. Honestly, I’m bitter that I still have to use that bloated, inflexible website ever again.

Twitter: I’ve fallen off the Twitter bandwagon a little. I still enjoy using the site, but I’ve noticed lately that it’s the same people posting the same links to their blogs all the time. Somewhere along the line it became a tool for bloggers to pimp their own stuff, and the fun interactions have decreased. I still love Twitter, and the Twitter guys are great, but I may need to re-evaluate who I’m following to bring back the interesting bits.

Pownce: I’m still excited over this one – I love that I can post links, files and events all in one place. But the best part is that now I can create sets of people that I can post for and monitor. There’s a lot of information, just like every other site, but now I can whittle down and choose what I want to view.

So anyway, I guess what I’m tying to say is that you have to choose which sites are valuable to you, and then find a good way of handling the torrent of information that is sent your way. Gmail filters are a godsend for me, because they keep the social networking spam out of my inbox and stored away for perusal at my convenience.

I agree with Jason that people are getting too “splintered” with social networking sites, and that’s why I’ve decided to make sure a couple of them are always up-to-date (Flickr and Last.fm are mainstays for me). I think everyone is still in the trial and error period – the best sites always float to the top, and that’s where people will stay.

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