Too Many of Me

Jeff Nolan addresses an issue that many others (e.g. Robert Scoble, Anshu Sharma) have begun to complain about recently. Namely, there are too many social networks to use realistically, and no one has adequately addressed the requirement for a cross-network identity management tool. For people in a position to give advice on new technology (Which is better, Jaiku, Twitter or Pownce? Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn?) and for those of us who just like it and like to sound informed, there are just too many many mes.

For each social network, I have to:

• Create an account, which often means reading anti-bot ciphers, confirming from my email, digging through my spam folder to find the confirmation.
• Create a profile (again), work, school, marital status, home, blah-blah-blah.
• Add some contacts (again) because you can’t really understand the potential of a social network without some friends first (reals ones, not Tom).

And coming soon, platform proliferation. Once MySpace and LinkedIn release platforms (as I noted in an entry yesterday), questions of “Which platform is best, which has the best applications, which is the easiest for development?” will need to be answered.

Don’t get me wrong. I love this gig. I just wish I had more time for it.

Please someone build a profile and contacts aggregator for social networks (like Pidgin/Adium for IM) and make them all play nice. Or drop some knowledge on me about the silver bullet I haven’t seen (not Plaxo, I can’t even get that to run).  We need this soon.  Even Friendster is on the mend, page views were up 40% in May.

I thought they were dead?