Social Networks: When trop becomes too much…

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 6 months. And I still feel happy. And… I’ve given up on Social Networks. Seriously, I do not want to change. I have 6 email addresses. I only deal with two in earnest… the rest, I just automatically pick up.

I’m on all kind of Google stuff, on LinkedIn, Facebook, Bebo, Plaxo, Twitter, Friendfeed, MSN, Yammer, WordPress, Blogger, Delicious, Digg, Sphere, Tumblr, Foursquare, Gowalla, Heat!, 2^nd Life!, YouTube, Spurl, ScoopIt, Netlog, Technorati, Flickr, Instagram, WordPress, Beknown, Evernote, 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 to be everywhere at once. Bilocation is my middle name.  Reality is, if you look closely, that most of these networks are empty shells, populated by frozen avatars. Reality is, that you can only spend so much time on line. 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 the people that I’m already linked to on a dozen networks yet again? Another invite? To do what exactly?

I’m getting old and tired. Yes, I’ll sign in on your new network. Send me an invite, 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…