Too Many Social Networks!
A problem I’ve had as of late: I am on way too many social networks! As of right now, I maintain accounts on:
- Twitter (twitter.com/phoneboy)
- Jaiku (phoneboy.jaiku.com)
- Pownce (pownce.com/phoneboy)
- Plurk (www.plurk.com/user/phoneboy)
- identi.ca (identi.ca/phoneboy)
- Hictu (www.hictu.com/users/phoneboy)
- Plazes
That’s probably not all of them, of course, but those are the ones that I’ve signed up for. Which one do I follow? All of them! How many do I actively participate in? Most of them.
Part of the problem is that it’s hard to say which one of these platforms will be the dominant one. I stake my claim on the services to ensure I have my place there–just in case.
What ends up being a Godsend for me is HelloTxt, which not only lets me send updates to most of these services simulatenously, but it also lets me look across the social networks to see what all my contacts last said! I can even merge the various instances of people across these social networks! Cool beans!
HelloTxt doesn’t support is Hictu, which just launched the 2.0 verson of their service and released their API. Right now, Hictu is invite-only, but any existing member can invite you. Leave a comment and I’ll be happy to invite you.
HelloTxt also doesn’t support Plazes, either, but I’m not sure what is going to become of that.
Which service will win? We shall see…
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Comment by Rita El Khoury
For once, I have to disagree with you Daemon. I joined Jaiku because it seemed that everyone was mentioning it in the Nokia blogosphere. Ever since, I have been addicted to it, because it serves so many purposes (getting in touch with fellow bloggers and readers, ask a question and get an answer ASAP, a lot of links to interesting reads and news, random funny posts…). I am also on Facebook, and mind you, I didn’t open my own account, my friend surprised me one day by coming and saying that she opened one for me.
What I found throughout my experience on Jaiku and Facebook is that everyone that I follow there has an account on either plurk or twitter or whatever-other-social-networking-site-there-is. Which means that there is no added value in me following them there compared to following them on Facebook or Jaiku. I think it is hence irrelevant to divide myself between 100 services and ponder which one will prevail. I use Jaiku daily, and have a Facebook add-on that takes my Jaiku updates and puts them as my new statuses. That pretty much does it. It’s time saving, and it takes off the irrelevancy of having to aggregate 10 services and follow the same 90% of people all over the places.
If one day, one of these services becomes the most used one, I will switch to it. But honestly, I think Jaiku has the potential. Being bought by Google means a lot, even though a lot of people are saying that Google bought Jaiku for the developers and not the service.
Comment by Stephen Keaveny
Hi
thanks for the info, have you got a Hictu invite please.
cheers
Stephen
Comment by Antony Pranata
I hope that they will be consolidating (or merging) to each other after Web 2.0 boom is over. At the end of the day, they may realize that they couldn’t make good money -> thus have to join “Web 2.0 dead pool” or merge with another company.
Comment by PhoneBoy
@dotsisx None of the socnets work the way I want in all respects. I also am a “joiner” to some extent, so I register and take my cues from my peers as to which ones are appropriate.
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Comment by Kyle
Hictu invite please? I want to try it out.
Thanks!
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