"Help! I'm being social-networked to death"~ Jim Ware

Over at TheAppGap blog Jim Ware has a REALLY interesting post seeking help in his social networking state of "overwhelm", the perfect term I've heard "Identity Woman" Kaliya Hamlin Young use.

As Jim is in the business of studying the future of work it's not surprizing his focus is the relevance of social networking to his life and getting work done:

"But I’m getting more than a little overwhelmed by all these different social networking websites - LinkedIn, PlaxoPulse, Facebook, and there must be a couple of others that I’ve somehow been dragged into joining (though the fact that I can’t remember what they are says something about how (un)important they are to my life and work)." ~ Jim Ware

Many aspects of Jim's post caught my attention including the fact that 5 days went by before anyone, me, commented.  What does that tell us? Is it commentary in a world of social networks about their multiple and competing excessive demands on individual time and attention?  Or does it testify to the swirling and troubling challenges in the financial system and economy becoming priority one? (I wonder what social networking site usage patterns look like these past few weeks.)

Having paid close attention to Facebook since co-convening our Facebook Groups in Business Investigation 2007, interesting to me in Jim's post is his focus on the individual's use of social networks. Specifically Jim pushes us to consider where is the value in social network participation and:

"Which of these networks is good for what?"

I'm assuming readers of this blog have answers for Jim and invite your contributions please. 

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Comments

[Jim Ware]

Jenny, thanks for picking up on this topic. I do find it interesting that my plea for help has generated so little commentary

As I've suggested privately to you, I wonder if the fact that no one posted on my comment means people are only responding to things from inside their own networks?

That's understandable in this age of overload - but also regrettable in that they may be shutting themselves off from new and innovative sources of information and ideas (I worry about that personally all the time).

Let's see what happens this time. I'm also going to post something on both the appgap blog and our own future of work blog (http://www.thefutureofwork.net/blog) to see if I can generate some additional conversation about social networking.

[Sam]

Re: the impact of site traffic to social networks and the financial meltdown, I have not seen it.

I run a site (Otrib.com) that could be considered a social network. We help consumers manage end of life events and, as part of that mission, we have forums and chat rooms for users to help comfort one another.

Over the past two weeks we have seen strong visit counts (and record time on site stats). However, we did see a pretty marked drop off during the Olympics this summer.

[Jenny Ambrozek]

Sam, Thanks for visiting, introducing us to Otrib.com and providing insight into your site activity patterns.