rWorld2

If we were all the same this wouldn’t be an issue.

My social networking practice has diverged. I use Twitter for work and professional commentary with the occasional policy-related excursion into fields beyond learning technology. I use Facebook for personal, mostly local, Oxford-based social and political activity. Although I have a LinkedIn account I don’t much use it; I have found some old college classmates there. I have posted recordings of poems on mySpace and follow a few local bands.

I follow Twitter and Facebook (and now LinkedIn and mySpace) using TweetDeck. I use TweetDeck to post to Twitter, but I usually post to Facebook on the Facebook site. I rarely update mySpace. I accept and occasionally offer LinkedIn connections but rarely update my status there.

Now, I am wondering how to manage these networks?

My question arises for three reasons.

1) Many of my contacts blanket cover three of these services: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with the same message. They update their status once and splash it to all three. Since I follow all three networks there are a lot of duplicated messages.

2) Other friends do what I do only in reverse. They use Facebook for professional contacts and Twitter for personal stuff. So, I find my personal Facebook space getting hit with work stuff. But if I want my work-related updates to reach those people who use Facebook for work, I have to post work stuff to my social stream. This leads some people to post – well let’s just say queries, like what’s all this “rubbish”.

3) TweetDeck enables all four networks to be monitored, and you can post to one or all. I could easily update all with the same messages.

As I said at the beginning, if everyone just did what I do there would be no problem

I am thinking of culling people from Facebook who just duplicate their Twitter postings. I have “hidden” their posts on Facebook, now. I want to see if hiding also hides them from the TweetDeck column.

I won’t duplicate posts – except rarely – to multiple networks. I will try to dignify the difference between my networks

Twitter will remain my professional social networking outlet with the occasional political rant. Facebook will be for personal, social and political stuff – I mean heck, it is wired into the CIA, why make it hard for them?

I will monitor all the streams so I will see posts from those work colleagues who use Facebook. I can comment and respond. But they may miss my invaluable opinions on Twitter. I suspect, somehow, they will survive.

Posted via email from George’s posterous