AMK did a post where he graphed is social software connections. I thought that is rather interesting, so I decided to do it myself. Doing this put a couple of things into perspective for me.
One is that I like the microblogging services. At the moment I swap between identi.ca and Jaiku. I started to use the former after hearing the creater, Evan Prodromou, interviewed on FLOSS Weekly. Liked his reasoning behind choosing PHP and appreciated it being open source. But I still prefer Jaiku. Plus I have talked to some people while here at Google who are still working on it so I have a personal connection to the app. Twitter is only there because I started to use it for a second time just before the whole rash of fail whales earlier this year hit. And even FriendFeed can do microblogging. But I really should settle down to a single account instead of jumping around.
My second revelation is how empowering FriendFeed is. I mean I love the site and consider it one of only two web services I use which I consider invaluable that is not run by Google (the other being Instapaper). But having them all come together into a single location is nice. Plus having various ways to export the information back out (e.g. Twitter and my personal blog) makes it even handier.
Third, Facebook is just a walled garden with an information blackhole in the center; information might go in, but nothing comes back out of it to contribute to my presense online. Since I don't use the service to keep in touch with friends and nothing I do within the service can come back out, I have pretty much decided I am going to delete my account. I would rather find some other service where my information can be more useful to me outside of the service itself.
It's rather amazing the amount of information that people are able (and willing) to share online these days. I think people will continue to tear down the barriers of data as time goes on and become more and more comfortable sharing information online. I know I use the basic rule that if a stranger asked me about something and I am willing to answer, then it's okay to toss it online. Turns out I am willing to share a lot. =)
