Dealing with social media overload
If you're like me, then you've spread yourself razor-thin across a number of social networking/media services like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. There just isn't enough time in the day to update your status in all of these places at once, or stay on top of the updates from all of the people you know.
How does one deal with social media overload? Social networking services are often referred to as "walled gardens" in that they are totally isolated from each other, but these walls need to be knocked down for users to stay engaged without getting burnt out.
There are a number of existing aggregators out there (see here) which are built upon the right idea but fall just short of the "killer app" in this regard. As you'll see below, aggregation is only part of the answer.
The realm of possibility is really only constrained by how much information these services are willing to share (and how far along their APIs have come), but here's what I'd love to see in a social networking aggregator:
Aggregation of updates without a membership requirement
Provide some basic information about each of the services you use, and see activities from everyone you know compiled in one list. FriendFeed is close, but the problem is that you only get updates from other FriendFeed users - not all of your friends within each service. This would obviously result in a massive list, but could theoretically be filtered/sifted through by media type, service, etc.
Push updates to multiple services from one location
Update your status in one place, and get it pushed out to each service. Conversely, recognize duplicate updates from multiple services upon receipt when your friends do the same thing, and combine them into a single update in the UI to prevent unnecessary/redundant clutter.
Build your own callouts/shortcuts for commonly used functions specific to a particular service
Create your own dashboard of shortcuts like "Upload Photos" which takes you to the appropriate place in Flickr, etc.
What would you like to see in the ultimate social networking aggregator?
Comments
Update your status in one place.
http://ping.fm allows you to update your status in one place and pushes it to all of your networks. While this is only one piece of the puzzle, it is nice to see that the puzzle pieces are becoming clear.
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