My Three-Legged Social Networking Strategy

Yesterday, I mentioned elsewhere that Yahoo has started a Digg-clone, something that they are calling Yahoo Buzz. Although it is currently in BETA and are only allowing 100 publishers to participate, I think that this could end up being a decent alternative to Digg — especially if you write something terrific and it ends up on the home page of Yahoo.

I’m always re-examining my social media strategy, trying to determine what is hot and what is not. Right now, I am employing a three-legged strategy, with some legs much firmer than others:

StumbleUpon — I’m still very active with this community, but I’m spending more time stumbling current friends pages than anything else. I left the reservation for awhile, stumbling pages I wasn’t too fond of, but I’ve gotten very picky over the past month and am being quite selective. Feel free to send pages you think that I will find interesting.

LinkedIn — I believe it was Anthony Kirlew at the Web Traffic Team who formed a connection with me on LinkedIn, a move that triggered me to take a closer look at this social networking tool. I’ve started to participate in LinkedIn Answers, a section of the site where members post business-related questions and people get to answer and I plan on meeting up with local members at an upcoming event.

MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, et al — The third leg on my social networking stool is my weakest and includes a handful of social networks I check out from time to time. Each one has something for me, but I’m particularly fond of the MyBlogLog Buzz page where I can keep tabs on my stats.

Beyond that, I am making an effort to keep up with my blog reading, a much more personal way of staying in touch with people regardless of whether they are part of the same social networks I am involved with.

I think if social media dropped dead overnight, I’d still be in good shape — I know who many of you are and sometimes I simply prefer to stop by your site to see what is up.

I Don’t Want To Be Your Friend

Good. I got your attention.

Seriously, I’ve been going through somewhat of a social media crisis these past few weeks, a crisis not entirely of my own making.

Ever since I became very active with social media about two years ago when I joined MySpace, the pressure to join additional networks, add new friends, and really “work” the system has intensified. I still have a presence on MySpace but I largely ignore this medium even when a twenty-something hottie thinks that this near 50 year old writer is da bomb. I know that she was deeply disappointed to learn that I am faithfully married and simply not looking for the type of friendship she has to offer.

What I am regularly finding in my email box these days are invites to new networks I have never heard of. I won’t name them here, but when I looked at the various networks I already belong to (and hardly register a presence there), I thought: do I need to stretch myself any thinner? I think not.

True, I am very active with StumbleUpon and to a lesser extent with MyBlogLog, with little interest elsewhere other than the occasional LinkedIn add. I’ve avoided Facebook, which is probably good as I have learned that Facebook invades users’ privacy. I know that it is virtually impossible to extricate oneself from MySpace, so why bother with Facebook? I’ll let the other 64 million users get to know each other real well, as well anyone can in a crowded environment.

Speaking of StumbleUpon, I am removing “friends” who are no longer active with SU, but I noticed that even as I remove people, SU won’t allow me to add new friends. Apparently, there is a bug in their system that says I have reached the 200 friends limit, but I know that this number is now down to 188. Once SU fixes their bug, I’ll make some changes, but I’m not going to notify them either as it just isn’t all that important to me.

Ultimately, I find this whole “friending” thing to be a bit silly as it diminishes what being a true friend is all about. Certainly, some of my readers would probably be my friends in “real life” but the vast majority of people I come into contact with online are people I probably will never meet.

I don’t know about you, but friends in the flesh carry a lot more weight then online acquaintances, people I can see face-to-face, hang out with, offer mutual encouragement, etc.

No, I’m not giving up my social media involvement, but I must tell you that friending isn’t a priority for me. I’ll gladly trade quality stumbles with you and work on beneficial projects, but I’m not looking to expand an impossible to maintain social media network.

Crisis over.