It has become quite a common routine for people to open a whole slew of social network sites upon opening a browser in one's computer. My browser, Firefox of course, opens up about a half dozen sites when I start my online routine. There usually is no problem in doing this, but the problem lies in updating all of them with as little time in between when doing so. Thankfully, there are a number of web apps or services that help me update all of my social networks in one go. Also, the social networks themselves are adding features that let you update other social networks when posting updates. When left unchecked, it can cause feedback, much like a microphone that's too close to a speaker. It gets loud. Too loud. Twitter, by itself, does not post updates to other social networks, like Facebook, MySpace, Plurk, etc. Facebook, by itself, also does the same thing. The difference between the two is that Facebook imports "stories" from other sites, such as blog feeds, Google Reader, StumbleUpon, etc, and shows it in the home page. Facebook is noisy as it is, with updates from friends that answered quizzes, joined groups, became fans, etc. Twitter is noisy when the people you follow update their statuses by the minute, which is sometimes the case. I don't mind the noise. Not at all. Other social networks choose to do something different. Take, for example, Friendfeed. Although it functions like Twitter BUT with real-time updates, it also aggregates friends' feeds from other social networks. So if a friend of mine is a Friendfeed user and I follow them on Friendfeed, I get their status updates to Friendfeed and any social network they have decided to add to their feed, like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Friendfeed is great as it tries to be the one-stop-shop to check friends' updates and start-slash-continue discussions by posting comments. The problem with Friendfeed is that it can't post an update to other social networks, other than Twitter, at the same time. Ping.fm solves this dilemma by providing a service that updates a number of social networks. So in one posting, I can update my status in all the social networks I belong to. It was great, at first. However, whenever I check my Friendfeed, it displays my Ping.fm-based update several times because the same message was posted to a number of social networks I added. It may not be a problem, nor would anyone care, but it was me who was annoyed by multiple instances of the same message. I decided to remove the social networks from Friendfeed that I update simultaneously through Ping.fm. So before, when I update my status, my Friendfeed displays the same message that I posted in Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk. Now, it just displays the update I posted to Friendfeed. This way, I don't annoy my followers with a number of mirrored posts. The only difference in those mirrored posts is where it was posted. There are desktop clients, whether AIR-based or otherwise, that let users post messages simultaneously to multiple social networks. Twhirl, an AIR-based desktop application, posts primarily to Twitter, but has extended its coverage by using Ping.fm's service, posting tweets to other social networks. However, I still use Ping.fm's service to update my social networks instead of Twhirl, mainly because I can't use Twhirl on other computers or on my phone. And then, there's Plurk. Although the concept is similar to Twitter, the execution is very different. And recently, they have decided to add a feature where a plurk is also posted on Twitter and Facebook, among others. Since I was using Ping.fm already, I saw no reason to use this feature. It only made sense that I stick to one service, or method of updating my status, to prevent confusion and me annoying the hell out of everybody else. If only Friendfeed's aggregation features and Ping.fm's updating service merge into one, with a desktop client to boot, it would make updating and keeping tabs on multiple social networks a whole lot easier. That would, in my very humble opinion, take the social network scene to a whole new level.

A lot of people are becoming more and more dissatisfied with Facebook and its features, not to mention the recent fiasco over who owns the content according to changes in the TOS that were reverted back to the original. As for a semi-regular Facebook user, one who just drops in daily to check if there are any interesting updates, I find it somewhat intrusive, and as it tries to lure me in to use it as a junkie would, there's still a long way to go before I consider Facebook as something of an essential service for me to use as ubiquitously as possible, despite a huge amount of loyal fans and users. Sarah, from sarahintampa.com, noted in her post that she wants to use Facebook for both personal and professional purposes. And I totally get it, even if I don't have her problem of being a famous Internet celebrity, one that entails a number of people asking her if it's okay to follow her, which means she has to follow them also. For those who don't know her, she writes for Read Write Web, among other things. Anyway, she points out that there's no option for Facebook users to follow someone without also being followed. That is a big turn-off. I'm not saying Facebook should be like Twitter, wherein you can follow someone without them NEEDING to follow you, and you don't have to follow someone who wants to follow you. It's just that there are no options to filter the people you follow into groups or cliques. True, the essence of a community is giving and receiving, but one can only take so much, and sometimes, people who follow you mindlessly click on the invite friends button to add every single app available in Facebook. Upon seeing another request to play Mob Wars, or to join a cause to feed some poor schmuck, I am reminded by my priorities. Sitting atop my priority list is getting out of debt, and I doubt spending hours and hours of playing vampire or pirate will help me do that, and neither will joining a virtual 5K run to help cure cancer. How do you cure cancer by running? Virtually? This tires me out just thinking about it. I believe in causes. Most of them are noble. But I think there's a better way of promoting causes, and being transparent about it. Will someone be donating something somewhere if I accept your request for joining a cause? If so, how come it isn't published somewhere other than Facebook? Don't you think something this big won't be covered by major news sources? What, Facebook is the only avenue you know of promoting your cause? Yeah, right. I have about five pesos in change sitting in my drawer that I can give you. How do I give you that? For a big company, Facebook should have made a dedicated page for events/causes that users can join. All the members SHOULD get are notifications, in digest form on a weekly basis, of the new events/causes that may be of some interest. I don't want my friends, all two of them, to simultaneously invite me to join some cause that I MIGHT not believe in. The application page also needs a lot of work, in the sense that Facebook HAS TO CREATE ONE FIRST. And it should all be OPT-IN, and not shoved down your throat. And again, notifications should be in place for new applications added every week instead of getting the same request to add a trivial game from all the people you follow. As Facebook grows, it's only normal for the public to expect more from the service as the amount of time people spend using it increases, and Facebook is somewhat slow in responding to these expectations. Then again, this article is just a big rant on how ineffective Facebook is. And no, spending more time to fully experience what Facebook is all about will NOT contribute to checking off priorities on my list. Poking me will only result in physical violence and injury. Got any pet peeves or raves about Facebook? Let's hear it in the comments section.

Is there such a thing as too many social network memberships? MySpace lets you add friends and share your interests. Facebook, Friendster, and Multiply, among others, do this as well. They integrate games and various applications to make the experience more fun. Then there's LinkedIn where members share professional information with friends. Then you have StumbleUpon that lets you share sites that you like with your friends and other members. And then there's social network sites for news like Digg, Reddit, and Mixx that allow you to share news sites with others. Twitter comes in to provide their members with a medium to either amuse or annoy their followers. People you follow would sometimes display flashes of brilliance in 140 characters or less, but most of the time, it's just trivia.

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