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Know When To Say When To Social Media

It’s Time To Clean Up Your Social Media Clutter
Out with the old and in with the new. Why wait around until spring time to start organizing your life, your home and, more importantly, your social media portfolio? With 2009 sprawling ahead of you it’s time sort the social clutter that’s been piling up around on your computer desk and in your inbox.

One way to start this process is to take inventory of the social networking and bookmarking sites you subscribe to, and decide which services you like best in each category. After all, everyone wants to save time and spending hours a day on multiple services isn’t nearly as efficient as getting extra quality time on the best services.

Social Bookmarking: Vote Delicious
Social bookmarking services remind us to revisit sites we like. But too many of them can be more trouble than good. Delicious, Ma.gnolia, Diigo, and ZigTag all serve their purpose, but unless you’re suffering from amnesia, it’s not likely you’ll need more than 20 reminders a week.

Delicious is the oldest social bookmarking site, and Quantcast classifies it as a top 5,000 site that gets nearly 1.1 million unique visitors a month from the U.S. This site also boasts a better interface, more users, and better tagging than the other sites, which allows users to find and share bookmarks more efficiently.

Micro-blogging: Choose Twitter
Blogging is no longer merely a venue for annoying self promotion. These days it’s found its way into social media, marketing, and, even mainstream journalism. If you’re not writing blogs yourself, you’re probably reading them.

Many bloggers have likely sampled the services of Plurk, Identi.ca, or Jaiku, but Twitter remains the top micro-blogging site. What makes Twitter the best place to blog? The number of users that comment each day, and superb level of reliability set Twitter apart from other sites.

Social Networking: Go With Facebook
If you’re like most people and addicted to your social networking sites, it may be time to admit that you have a problem. This isn’t necessarily so if you’re only using one network, like Facebook. But if you still find yourself religiously checking your MySpace, Friendster and LiveJournal accounts, it’s time to narrow down your inventory. If you still have friends scattered across networks other than Facebook, it’s not likely to be for long. Facebook’s clean design, countless applications, and other charms have garnered it the fastest growing social networking site in the U.S.