Five O’Clock Shadow 32

Five O'Clock Shadow 32.jpg

Originally uploaded by evo_terra.

Will you be my friend? I've written on this topic before, and I probably will again as I fully grasp the new and social media concept of friendship. And besides -- doesn't that guy look happy enough to become friends with?

Like many of you, I'm eager to sign up on the latest social media craze. Many -- if not all -- have some concept of friendship, where you add those folks you know and encourage others to add you. On the surface, what's the point? I already know who my friends are and don't necessarily need the validation of shouting my friendship to the world.

True. But if you think of the concept of friends more as connections, the power becomes a little more obvious. I'm really not interested in seeing every photo that my Friends put on Flickr. Nor am I interested in reading every single Tweet, checking out their Myspace profile after each change, or following them obsessively on Plazes.

However, I realize that some people will key in on certain social media sites as their preferred method of conversation. And likely, their preference may not match up with mine. So as a smart connector, it's my job to connect with as many folks as possible on as many social networks as possible, and make sure I give attention to each of those networks. As you can imagine, that's tough to do and it gets incrementally tougher each time you add a new place. Lords know I have plenty of places right now. So we'll see how I keep up. Today, I'm tackling Flickr.

And what we really need is for someone to develop a "six-degrees of separation" tool that works across many networks. I could plug in my Digg profile and the Linkein profile of Rick Klau (Feedburner), and the tool would search both of them and look for commonalities and opportunities. Now that would be a useful tool!