Linking is great, feedback loops aren’t
Posted on 08. Jun, 2011 by benmckenna in Blog, Policy, Technology
One of the nice things about this social media business, or perhaps more accurately this business of having multiple social accounts, is that you have the ability to link them all together. Theoretically you can link your Facebook, Twitter, LinkenIn, Foursquare, Friendfeed, Favstar, Delicious, Gowalla, StumbledUpon, Youtube, WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr and Vimeo accounts together so one status update bounces around your whole social universe and updates the panopoly of your friends as to the exact nature of your life at all times.
It’s great to play around with this stuff sometimes, it’s fun to see who reacts to what where and how but I’m posting this as a sort of open plea for people to start showing some restraint.
Just because you can it doesn’t mean you should and that maxim goes just as much for sticking your tongue in a plug socket as it does for linking up your Facebook account to your LinkedIn page. Do your hundreds of professional contacts really want to know that you’ve been tagged in a less than flattering photo on your best mate’s stag do or that you are so hungover you are not sure whether you can make it through this next meeting without a bucket? Perhaps more pertinently if you post somewhere a lot, just as I do with Twitter for example, do you think you should link that account to somewhere else?
I’m a big fan of people policing their own social space, we all have friends who – whether it be through a lack of self-awareness or technical proficiency – share too much or just too often but have we stopped for a moment to think this may be us? Are you over sharing?
Take a look at your accounts for a moment and think what’s attached to what. Ask yourself whether it’s really fair for you to monopolise the streams of your friends, followers, connections or subscribers who may post far, far less than you. Remember too, this is a call and response business, if you cant register the responses should you really be making the calls?
