What kind of person feels guilty about spending too much time with other online social networking tools at the expense of their own personal blog?

This kind, apparently. Sorry, LastDitch. I'll do better, I promise.

I have not been paying too much attention to this blog lately because a couple of weeks ago I decided that I needed to update my presence on the web. I already had this blog and I was using Twitter fairly frequently but other than that I was pretty anonymous. So I went and updated my LinkedIn and Plaxo accounts (both primarily business networking sites) and, with much anxiety and trepidation, I jumped headlong into FaceBook.

My reasons for doing this were varied, some professional, some personal. However, one of the main ones was simple curiosity. One of the biggest problems with social networking tools is that they only work well if you keep them up to date. And if you choose to participate in a lot of these sites then the time requirements to keep them updated really start to add up. I just wanted to see if I could find a way to belong to all of these useful services without having to tell my kids that the next time I would see them was when they graduate high school.

FaceBook was the one that really concerned me. I had heard real horror stories about this time vampire. Twenty, thirty, and forty year olds sitting in dark rooms staring at a screen waiting for their wall to update them with a gift or a survey or a quiz on which Jonas Brother they are most like. Just waiting. Like some crystal meth addict staring at a case of Sudafed. Let's just say that it took some convincing for me to join. In the end my sister Kathy convinced me that it wasn't that bad and could be a good way to keep in touch and network (she was right).

So after I went ahead and joined, updated, friended, and what have you I needed a good way to mash everything together. It actually ended up being surprisingly easy(I think they all learned a lesson from MySpace's horrible exclusivity policies). All of these sites have great integration tools that are very easy to set up and once up it is very easy to keep everything updated.

For example, you people out there who have friended me on FaceBook may have noticed that I update my status fairly frequently. The truth is, I have NEVER updated my status on FaceBook. I have responded to posts on my wall and brought in a few pictures but all of my FaceBook status updates are actually Twitter posts. Even the majority of my photos on there were not uploaded but instead come from my linked Flickr account.

I have found Twitter to be an extremely powerful tool that I began using at work as a way to keep my team updated and then started branching out and using for fun and now have come full circle and started using it professionally in different ways. For those who don't know, Twitter is a micro blogging tool that lets you send out blog posts of up to 140 characters at a time. The people who choose to follow you will receive these posts. In turn, you can follow as many Twitterers as you like. I use it for both work and fun, sometimes both at the same time. I follow people like Neil Gaiman and John Hodgman, I also follow CNN, HealthCare Mobile, and the American Heart Association. I have had interesting conversations with it (not one to one, but sometimes, one to thousands) and as I said, I have recently started using it more professionally. My use of Twitter has actually resulted in phone meetings with CEO's of companies around the country that are in my field of telemedicine. Using tools like TweetDeck allows you to filter tweets (Twitter posts) by key words so that I can find people who are tweeting about telemedice or healthcare or the Red Sox or whatever. Since I have started using it I have found that it has many more uses besides just letting people know when I land at the airport.

So, if it seems like I am updating my status on FaceBook a lot, I apologize but I am really not. Those are either twitter posts or posts from this blog (yes, I have linked this blog to show up on my other sites as well). My Twitter and LastDitch posts show up not only on FaceBook but on LinkedIn and Plaxo as well. As some of you have already seen, my twitter posts also show up here on this blog. If it is too much for some of you then feel free to unfriend me or block me. Hell, I won't blame you, half the time the twitter posts won't make any sense to you anyway (if you see an @name in a post it means I am replying to someone else's tweet, which you obviously will not have seen so it will make no sense to you). If, however, you don't care, then feel free to follow along with some of the shenanigans, hi-jinks, and minutia that is my life and feel free to comment on it if you like. Either way, it's all good.

By the way, I am enjoying FaceBook. It has allowed me to reconnect with a lot of people I have not seen in forever. The other day I got a message from my all time favorite grade school teacher that I have not heard from in almost 30 years. Now that is cool.

Since I have gotten everything linked together what I am finding difficult is finding a balance to what I post and put out there. Do my friends on FaceBook really care that I am on the panel of an upcoming Telemedicine Webinar? Probably not, nor should they. However that one post also went to my LinkedIn and Plaxo accounts and the contacts I have there do care. Conversely, do the members of the CIO/CTO Leadership Council that I belong to on LinkedIn care that we have a new puppy in our house? I doubt it. But they are going to see that post along with my FaceBook friends who might.

So for the time being I think I will just mix things up a bit. I may actually post some topics related to my work here on LastDitch just so that I don't inundate my professional contacts with puppy pictures. We'll see.

I do plan on posting more here just cause I miss it. I know I only have like 3 readers out there who follow me regularly (shout out to Mike P!) but I actually find the writing therapeutic. By the way, if you do read this, feel free to let me know because, while I do enjoy writing here, sometimes it feels a lot like mental masturbation and, well, you know, its funner when more people join in. Remember, Feedback/Comments = Love. Anyway, enough babbling on, I need to go get my new shipment of plexiglass siding to help hasten my transformation into the boy in the bubble.

Cheers

P.S. feel free to follow any of these, or not ... whatever
http://twitter.com/jmoynihan
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jlmoynihan
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=635238364&ref=profile
http://www.flickr.com/people/jlmoyni/