Too Much Noise?

Social networking...the most popular phrase of late adopters everywhere. The thing that is dominating most marketers worlds (some for many years, some more recently). If you can ascertain one thing from this new world...it's that it creates a lot of noise.

Blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Yelp, FourSquare...just to name a few of the way people connect. Some people have their Facebook status connected with their LinkedIn status connected with their Twitter status. This seems so weird to me, yet, I think it is the new normal?

To disclaim, I guess I am a rather early adopter. I have had a website/blog since about 1998 as a way to connect with my friends overseas. We used to have group IM sessions...me late at night, them early in the morning. In the early email/early new-media age, this was the way we stayed connected. I worked for an company where I had to have accounts on all these platforms and had to understand them. When I left, I only stayed on what I really liked (mainly, Facebook...W00T).

I recently had to start on the Twitter, just to learn more about it for my job. It's the new sweetheart, a way to marry the professional aspect of LinkedIn with the information pushing of Facebook, but you can still be rather anonymous. I held out as long as I could...

It was just too much noise.

Does anyone really care what I have to say that much? I doubt it, but it is an interesting experiment. I am seeing all these companies follow me, in hopes that I will in turn follow them and hopefully succumb to their wiley marketing ways. And while I am learning, really, it is tough to remember to follow something else, to update something else.

So how much is too much? Will something new and improved come along and replace Facebook? What is the next Twitter? Will the kiddos start using these things, and then us old folks have to follow?

I love new media, I really do. I love my iPhone. People may overshare, but there's also a weird connection that comes with knowing what's going on in people's lives. But, still, a huge part of me longs for the days where the most sophisticated thing was getting on three-way calling with your friend, and calling the person you like, just to check if they're home, and hang up when they answer...no *69 or caller ID.