It must be the new 42 in my bio. I’m getting old. I’ve lost it somewhere between the hipness and troubling youngness of 41 and the midlife grim of 42. I’m getting old. It comes with grey hair, faster cars and a certain reluctance to adapt to new things.
You want proof? I have not updated my Facebook profile picture for six months. And I still feel happy. And… I’ve given up on social networks. Seriously, I do not want to change. I have six e-mail addresses. I only deal with two in earnest; the rest, I just automatically pick up.
I’m on all kinds of Google stuff, on LinkedIn, Facebook, Bebo, Plaxo, Twitter, Friendfeed, MSN, Yammer, WordPress, Blogger, Delicious, Digg, Sphere, Tumblr, Foursquare, Gowalla, Heat!, 2nd Life!, YouTube, Spurl, Netlog, Technorati, Flickr, Instagram, WordPress, Beknown, Evernote, ScoopIt, Quora and a dozen other pieces of social sorcery. Honestly, I have more than I can handle, more than I can share, more than I can read.
What more do I need? Let’s be honest, the market of social networks is saturated. Yes, I daily subscribe to new ones. Yes, I do have a Google+ account. Yes, as so many others I fake being everywhere at once. Bilocation is my new middle name. But the reality is that if you look closely, most of these networks are empty shells, populated by frozen avatars. The reality is, you can only spend so much time online. When I look closely on most networks there is nobody home but an automatic aggregator that faithfully mirrors a status update from another network.
Thank God for automatic status updates! Thanks for update mails, because how many social networks can you really, truly handle? If I roam through Google+, I see mostly automatic updates. Do people need it on top of their Facebook and other networks? And what is expected of me? That I link to the people that I’m already linked to on a dozen networks yet again? Another invitation? To do what exactly?
I’m getting old and tired. Yes, I’ll sign in on your new network. Send me an invitation, it’s ok. But I’ll download an aggregator and CRM tool to centralize my online presence faster than you can say nerd.
I can. I’m 42. So many things to do, so little time.