Managing Social Media Overload

I remember when my college roommate first signed up for a Friendster account and we all laughed at him. I don't know if would be accurate to call him an innovator, but it was certainly a sign of things to come.

Over the past 8 years or so, I've slowly found myself getting dragged further and further into the social networking labyrinth. It started as a Livejournal account to keep in touch with out-of-town friends. Then I added a Myspace to promote my rock band. At this point, the Livejournal crew converted to Blogger, and I followed - eventually creating three blogs, all with different intended audiences. In 2006, I found the emerging startup called Twitter and joined that. I rediscovered it again in early 2009, and it has been my social tool of choice as of late. Also thrown into the mix was a Facebook account that I created last summer to check up on a tribute group that was created for my father - he was a junior/senior high band teacher who passed away quite suddenly. Many former students used Facebook to share stories. While I never developed my account, it sits silently waiting for me to get the urge to upload some pictures and start hunting down old acquaintances. Just for the sake of embellishment, I'll also mention that I have accounts on Youtube, AIM, and Skype as well. Look at me - the picture of a renaissance man.

Here's the problem. I've never been a quitter. I still try to update every one of these sites on a fairly consistent basis. There's nothing more sad than seeing someone's personal site that resembles the village of Vesuvius. Instead of deadly gases and volcanic ash, the cause of abandonment being a new hot social networking site.

The solution to this social overload is somewhat of an oxymoron. Too many sites to keep updated? Add one more to the mix! Aside from having a catchy name that takes advantage of an obscure top level domain, chi.mp promises to streamline all social media sites. It's still in private testing, but my much-awaited beta code arrived in my inbox this morning. I haven't done more that set up the basics, but it looks promising. Perhaps the best feature is that you can assign a "persona" to everything you post. That way professional friends will only see my education-oriented blog, but be spared the rambling, sometimes offensive Livejournal account.

And the best part of Chi.mp is that you get your own, free domain name. Take a look at my account - thoughtla.mp (Pretty cool, huh?) - and if you get the urge to create your own account, add me to your community.

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