The Next Step for Social Networking

Maybe it's just me, but I've observed that the focus on social networking sites appears to be going increasingly more in the direction of sharing everything with everybody. These sites want us to believe that our friends care about the latest "make money online" trend, and that our family wants to learn about that hot date we had last night. They convince us that the more information that we post, the more subscribers we'll collect and the more accepted we'll become.

So what’s wrong with that? For my part, I have accounts with two of the largest social networking sites, as well as a few others. I log into at least those two each morning. My “book” wall usually has about 160 fresh posts since I last visited, and my “little blue bird” site has roughly double that many. While I would like to check and see what a particular segment of my contact list is up to, how can I even peruse that many posts to discover the ones that interest me? I guess I could start drinking my morning coffee from a bigger cup…

Now, I don't have a huge list of contacts. It’s quite small, actually in comparison to those that I've seen with thousands of followers, or subscribers, or whatnot. I am afraid to put more people on my contact list for fear that I will likely be overwhelmed by what my grandfather used to call “raucous cacophony” (loosely translated to imply “inharmonious noise”).

My other concern is that I do not truly believe that my networking contacts on the other side of the planet actually care about my friend’s birthday party, and I am positive my friends are sick of hearing about my most recent weblog entry on the versatility of commercial hybrid lighting. In truth, any given post will connect with those who will wish to read it and others that don’t. The more I post, the less likely people will read them, due to my history of posting things they don’t care about.

This is not an uncommon phenomenon. If you want a smaller percentage of your posts read, add more contacts. It’s not the most effective use of your time, but the more contacts you add, the smaller the percentage of those contacts will in fact read your posts.

What about your “bio”? For my part, I have learned to put nothing more than the most generic bio descriptions for my social networking accounts. I just don’t want to deal with people getting information about me that I don’t need them to know. I could open several accounts with various bios for different purposes, but that seems to me to be a bit of a bother. I do, nonetheless, know several folks who have done just that.

So what do I want? I want my contacts categorized into groups that I can easily manage. I want to see what’s happening with my friends or my coworkers or my networking contacts just by going to the appropriate “wall”. I would like to be on my “friends” wall and post something and be confident that just my “friends” will see it. I want to look for all my contacts that live near me and quickly and easily send a post to only them. I want my coworkers to visit my profile and see that I am a mature professional, or my networking contacts to read that I am a blue widgets authority. I would like my friends to view the image I took of Jason with the lampshade on his head, without my coworkers inquiring as to quality of my friends.

The best part is that since I'm only sending messages to people that I'm sure will want to read them, more of my posts will actually get read! I can send out party invites to my friends in San Jose, or quickly update my coworkers about a change in plans for the next meeting.

In essence, what I want is a "buzz conduit" which will direct the buzz to where I want it to go and give me just the buzz I wish to hear at any given time. I need that, and I would like some privacy back.

While it seems that the web 2.0 giants are not going to do anything akin to this any time soon, there is a website launching that will. It's going to allow you, me, and everybody else that wants to to have their very own buzz conduit. It will be called buzzduit.com, and it’s being built as we speak.

Go to buzzduit.com or take a look at their blog if you want to know the second it is ready to launch.