Snip, Snip

One day, in a fit of irrational social media exuberance, I created profiles at Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, orkut, and LibraryThing.

What brought on the flurry? A cross between "I need to build my platform" and "Let's see what works."

Some time ago, I left Plaxo and orkut -- two big cases of nothing happening.

Then I ditched frumpy LibraryThing for the prettier GoodReads. Shallow? Maybe.

Earlier this year, I discovered Twitter and signed up. Before Ashton Kutcher told all the cougars about it. I was at least that much ahead of the curve.

In an ongoing evaluation of tool usefulness, today -- just now -- I canceled MySpace and LinkedIn.

Reasons?

MySpace is a good tool for musicians, but clunky for blogging because of its weird, jealous software. Status updates I created outside MySpace (as through ping.fm) rarely made it onto my MySpace profile. Boooo.

As for LinkedIn, I think it must be great for corporate networking, job-seeking, and reference gathering, but all of those things are more briefcase than my career requires.

So now I have this blog, Twitter, GoodReads, and Facebook.

Daily Pie lets me to explore a lot of different things (hi, lifetime M.O.!).

Twitter is a tool for immediacy, finding cool articles through recs from others, and making casual conversation with, well, everyone.

GoodReads is just a great way to keep track of what I've read and want to read.

Facebook. I rarely check in with Facebook, but that's obvious to anyone who's friended me there. I don't use the quizzes, I don't play the games, and I ignore randomly gifted swords-o'-wounding. I use the site mostly to keep up with extended family and high school acquaintances, most of whom don't tweet or blog (or aren't tweeting or blogging things I'm interested in). If Briar-Bound were already sold, I'd create a page for it. I'm not convinced Facebook is an effective marketing tool, and probably less so if I baldly admit to using it as a marketing tool.

OK, and as I write this, I got an invitation for something called DesktopDating. And from someone I didn't know was single. Maybe he's not. Hmmm. Sorry, dude, I'm not a swinger. A sad day for nerdflakes around the globe, I'm sure. :D

And so the social media (mis)adventure continues. There's definitely something out there for everyone. The key is finding out what works for you, and tossing what doesn't.

Which social media outlets do you use? Do you use them for different purposes. Are your connections through A discrete from those you've made through B? How has your use of social media evolved?

[image via Wikimedia Commons]
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