Just like Dan, I get around, but I prefer not to bow out of those places that I frequent less. Why? If they’re free, it’s as well to be there and not be active than to not be there at all.

I’ve found that people look for me by name in some of the places I’ve got an account, but am inactive in.

But to reiterate Dan’s point, you also have to conserve your social media energy as much as possible, and avoid “mission creep”, which will, quite literally wear you out…

Decisions of where to invest our attention.

Having a personal currency exchange rate is needed.

What is the modality and value you demand in return to match a potential investment of attention?

In my opinion, working out the above (which requires working out what your ‘meaning of life’ is), makes everything around this subject neatly slot into place.

Confusion clears, bandwidth widens and the radio static of emerging activities becomes pleasant background to your main thing.

And the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.

If it’s fun, you’ll organically get the best out of it, as people can identiy with it and share and bask in your enthusiasim!

I definitely have primary socnets, Twitter and Facebook. The rest are just acts of convenience. It’s better to have an actual community than beachheads everywhere, but no real tangible contacts to work with. good post and thanks for the link!

Geoff

That’s partly why I don’t think microblogging will ever replace the function of long form blogging – it’s much harder to explain the reasoning, focus and clarity around a thought to more than one person and without 20 messages!

I think for me, I was just amazed at myself for feeling bad about not contributing enough to some key communities – and realising how many I’d signed up for over the past year or two and never attempted to engage with – and how many times I’ve seen other people doing the same thing.

People can start 100 groups to try and achieve something and none of them will get anywhere without the required enthusiasm and effort…

I didn’t get into Twitter until I discovered TweetDeck. Now I use it a lot more than I used to. However, not everyone is on Twitter at the same time, and there’s a lot to keep up with – even when you don’t follow 1000+ people. It’s easy to miss things on Twitter because there is so much being said.

I recently set up a blogging forum and it seems to be doing quite well. Focus is the key – the forum is aimed at helping bloggers, but is also a good place to chat. Years ago I used to participate in several general chat forums, but they don’t do anything for me anymore. Too many long threads with thousands of replies that aren’t really about anything anymore.

I’m reluctant to sign up to lots of new sites as I’d forget about them too, but a blogging forum can be a great way to interact with people who might not see your comments on Twitter. A forum may be quieter and less immediate, but sometimes it is nice to have more than 140 characters to elaborate on why you feel a certain way about something, without constantly linking out to blog posts.

In essence a forum works in a similar way to a blog with comments – and there’s still a place for blogs, right?