A post on the NY Times Bits blog points out that there are only so many social networking services any one person can keep up with on any given day. I know this is certainly true in my case. I’m always talking to clients about the relative importance of Web 2.0 and social networking tools to their higher-education concerns, but the fact is that I can barely keep our own blog updated, let alone check in on my Facebook page or remember to post chatty musings to Twitter.
Who are these people who maintain accounts with Tumblr, Stumbleupon, LinkedIn, Mixxd, and CrowdVine— what do they do all day? How do they get any work done?
(OK, I made up Mixxd. But I think the others are real.)
Update: Tony from CrowdVine comments that CV’s network is transient— used primarily during conferences for attendees to let each other know which sessions are “hot.” That’s a good point— it’s easy to understand how transient, explicitly function-oriented tools can be useful, and if CrowdVine’s efforts really are directed at serving temporary social networks like conferences, I wish them well. It’s a good idea.
Tags: social networking, tech overload, web 2.0
Tony Stubblebine | 18-Sep-08 at 3:03 pm | Permalink
I can answer that question from CrowdVine’s perspective. We mostly serve conferences and the people who use us want to have a better conference experience by finding people to meet face-to-face and finding which sessions are hot. The networks are transient. Where we can offer it, people port their identities in and when they’re done they port their new contacts out.
I think this “how many web services” question is a good one for services that are targeted at leisure. But for more goal oriented tools like us, or like LinkedIn, the question should “what is the most effective tool?”