I’m me. At least I try to be. I’m not one to put on airs or to be pretentious about things. I’m pretty much a simple what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. I guess that’s why I once ended up at a fairly exclusive, by-invitation-only, leadership training event in Chicago a few years ago with chicken poo on my shoe, but that’s another story.
Being yourself is easy, despite what Rodney Dangerfield may have said. It’s much easier than trying to be someone else. Or trying to be several someones at different times. As amateur philosopher Kurt Cobain once quipped “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.” And while I certainly don’t turn to Cobain’s works for issues of life guidance, that axiom does make a certain amount of sense.
Social Media
I guess that’s one reason why, when I finally started getting involved with Social Media, I didn’t want to create multiple persona’s, each with a distinct group of friends. I didn’t want to have one outlet for my SQL Server Professional colleagues, another for my Church family, yet another for my Scouting friends, and still another for my farming/prepping friends, and who knows how many more. Who has time for all that? Not me!
So, as I joined Twitter and FaceBook and LinkedIn and Plaxo I looked for ways to bring those independent and disparate worlds together. I sought ways to participate in all of them without having to spend a lot of time duplicating my efforts.
After trying a number of different ways to integrate my experiences in the different sites, I found one that seemed to work. I could tweet with Twitter and have those messages automatically become status updates for all the other Social Networking sites. Perfect! Or so I thought.
When Worlds Collide
But I slowly realized (much slower than most of my FaceBook friends would like, I suspect) that what seemed like a good idea at the time, really wasn’t.
Conversations I had with my Twitter friends were automatically finding their way to FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Plaxo status messages. Seeing one side of a conversation was definitely confusing to my non-Twitter friends. When combined with the hash tags, the non-intuitive reply nomenclature, and the technical acronyms of my chosen profession, most of my FaceBook statuses were utterly nonsensical.
Separate But Equal
So at long last, I’ve decided to completely sever the Twitter to other Social Media links in my Social Networking endeavors. My FaceBook friends will no longer have to put up with partial conversations, incoherent techno-babble, and strange looking, comic-book-cussing-like status updates. My tweets will be tweets and my status updates will be status updates and never the twain shall meet.
An Exception to Every Rule
Every rule has an exception (except that rule, right?). I have found a way to post status updates to all of my Social Media sites using one source – Ping.fm. When I feel that a single status update is relevant everywhere, I’ll use my Ping.fm acount to send it to all sites simultaneously. But rest assured that will be few and far between.
What about you?
I’d like to hear how you’ve tackled this modern day Chinese finger trap known as Social Media.
- Are you active in more than one Social Media?
- Have you tried to integrate them in some way?
- What have your experiences been?
Next Monday, I’m presenting a TechNet WebCast for Microsoft Thrive Live! The subject: SQL Server Locking & Blocking Made Simple. Here are the details:
#sqlpassabout 15 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to t_burger
