Managing Your Social Networks

Following my article about twitter and irc, a friend asked me about how I manage my information on various social networks:

I kinda have an all or nothing approach to things. If I’m not going to do social networks, then I don’t want some old neglected pages out there, I want nothing. If I’m going to do this, I want to get on all the main networks, and have a smooth consistent web presence. I hope that can be done without having it turn into a full time job.

From my experience, keeping various social network profiles up to date can take a lot of time. There are generally two strategies:

• Do it yourself, generally by preferring one network or service over others
• Use an aggregator service

There are pros and cons to both approaches.

Managing Your Social Network

There are some advantages to managing your various social networks yourself: more control, complete use of the services. Aggregator sites that sync and manage your online life are very new and you may not want to be their guinea pig. The key disadvange is that managing several networks takes time and a real strategy, otherwise you’ll end up with a mess on your hands. Since most people tend to start with from one network and slowly add new ones, this tangled web of information is a typical result.

The simplest solution is to be selective. Determine which services you need or want and then select a specific service provider for each one. Sometimes a single network will solve multiple problems. For example, I’ve chosen to use Flickr for hosting photos and Twitter for status updates. However, Facebook provides both of these services and some people prefer to just use Facebook.

If you keep things simple, then this may be as far as you need to go. Just resist the urge to join multiple networks and refer everyone back to your “official” home. However, if you do find yourself on multiple networks, then you’ll have to make some choices.

First, you need to consider why you’re using a particular network. It can be useful to partition your activities. For example, you might only use Facebook for close friends and family and use LinkedIn for business contacts. If you go this route, be sure to stick with it. Don’t even mention your Facebook profile to business associates. I have one friend who specifically uses an alias for their social networks to keep their real name from showing up in internet searches.

Secondly, several services have now built-in ways to import and export your data automatically. For example, there are Flickr and Twitter applications for Facebook which allow you to integrate the services. When doing this, keep in mind which service you want to be the “master” copy and only directly update this service. Allow the other services to pick up your updates downstream.

Finally, sometimes you can just be a little creative. For example, I tend to use the same profile photo of myself across networks. In some cases, I can keep this centralized by pointing all the networks to an image hosted by Gravitar. You can often pull similar tricks by linking newsfeeds between sites.

Social Network Aggregators

If managing multiple social networks on your own seems like too much work, then you’re not alone. In the last year or so several network aggregator services have popped up that help you keep your digital life in sync.

Some aggregators focus more on collecting updates from all your networks and presenting them to you in one place. Others are actual tools for synchronizing updates, profiles, and photos across multiple networks.

I personally haven’t used any of these services. But there are several reviews available online:

• FriendFeed
• Spokeo
• Social Thing
• My Life Online
• and a dozen or so more

And I should add that each main social network (Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.) has its own plan to become the one true network in your life. In some cases, their offerings may be good enough. From a technical point of view, as OpenSocial matures and sees greater adoption, this may all be much easier in the future. In the meantime, if you want to use an aggregator, be prepared to deal with beta-level software and a quickly changing landscape.

The reason I linked to the CrunchBase is because I think it’s a great way to find this sort of information. Often these services are so new that Wikipedia and even Google won’t give you a clear idea of what’s out there. Crunchbase tracks these companies and, more importantly, their competitors. So you can quickly see what other offerings there are.