Social Network Proliferation

Irwin Lazar commented on the recent influx of invitations to link to people on a new social network, Spock. I couldn't agree more. As soon as I got the emails I was turned off by the tone, and after visiting the site I couldn't figure out how this would do anything but further clog my inbox.

Right now I utilize three social networks: Facebook, Plaxo, and LinkedIn. In my view they serve distinct purposes and command different levels of attention.

Because I view these sites differently, I am trying to be very careful about how I view a "relationship" (or, friend). When Plaxo first introduced their "Plaxo Pulse" service, I noticed a massive increase in the number of requests to link to people ,similar to the "race" we have all seen by some people on LinkedIn to create massive relationship lists. While I like the new Plaxo Pulse service, I have avoided createing too many relationships on it because I use it differently than LinkedIn.

Here is a quick summary of how I use these sites and what to expect if you invite me to connect:

1. LinkedIn: I find this very useful for finding contacts through existing relationships. And, contrary to the original intent of only establishing "trusted relationships", I do tend to link to people I barely know (and accept link requests from the same). At the end of the day, the larger the network the better the chance of meeting someone that might be a valuable relationship in the future. So, if you want to link to me in LinkedIn, by all means do so!

2. Plaxo: I think Plaxo's ability to keep my address book current is fantastic. I am also loving the new ability to create synch points and synchronize address books across machines and platforms. I literally keep my address book at work, my work cellphone, my home computer, a personal cellphone, a yahoo email, and a google email all in synch automatically. It is truly a great service and enormously helpful. However, when it comes to linking (connecting) using Plaxo Pulse I am a little more selective than with LinkedIn. Why? because it seems that when you connect to someone they get added to your address book (and then synched with every other address book). I suspect there is a way to manage that using synch groups but that is more trouble than I am willing to go to. Bottom line: when I get a connection request, if I don't know you well enough to have you on all of my address books (including my cellphone) I wont accept it. Better to use LinkedIn if you want to connect to me.

3. Facebook: Other than the fact that my Facebook news feed is becoming so packed with sponsor adds and viral spam from applications that I haven't even loaded (but have been loaded by friends) I love the ability of Facebook to keep me connected to my friends (more on that in future posts). because of Facebook's security and privacy model, it is pretty much the only place I will upload photos and information about my family so I can share that with friends. Thus, the bar for me connecting to someone on Facebook is much, much higher than Plaxo. In fact, if I don't know and trust you well enough to let you know when I am not home, see pictures of me in triathlon gear, and see information about my family, I won't connect or accept a friend request on Facebook. I think this also has ramifications for the use of Facebook at work, but more on that later.

Not sure if others use similar guidelines but I thought I would share mine.

As for whether there is room for other social networks... I think so, but they have to serve a very specific niche IMO and ideally extend the other networks, not act as silos. I can think of a few areas where I would love to build a social network that would not overlap with the ones I mention above (and could even add value) but they would have to have a very specific purpose. To be frank, I am going to leave it at that... you never I know, I might try to build one of them some day. :-)