No secrets: Sharing insights, sharing goals helps all

Since I haven't stumbled across the book on How to Use the Internet Effectively, Efficiently and Properly I'm grateful when folks share what they are doing online, how they are doing it and why.

I was reminded of this when Ryan Sholin recently wrote How I share: A tour of my personal linking behavior.. He talked about how he uses Twitter (and its short life for links) , Friendfeed (where he comments on his Google Reader shared items and picks up several streams of contributions - Netflix, Disqus), Delicious, and, of course, Publish2 (the source of his paycheck now). But the bonus for me is the post led me to try TwitterFon for my iPhone.

Do you know where you go?

Then Tech blogger Louis Gray posted Know and Master Your Social Media Data Flow, who described what he sent where and included a map to illustrate his flow of information. Though I'm primarily a word geek, I often think in pictures as it helps me see the process. (Later, he updated with this presentation.)

How To Optimize Your Social Media Data Flow for All Networks

A comment on Gray's post led me to mrontemp's How I Publish. who explained back in 2008 not all of his shared items make it to his public flow of information:

"...one of my feeds consists of updates from my LinkedIn network. For a variety of reasons, I choose not to share that with the public. Similarly, I read a number of items that are specific to my vertical market. Again, for a variety of reasons, you can't see my interest in these items unless you're behind my corporate firewall."

That, of course, reminds me of some of the better advice I received from Ed Vielmetti and and others who save me from permanent damage. That advice has included:

• there's a checkbox on delicious.com that says Do Not Share. Not all computer pages should be shared.
  
• Or why you need to see what goes where - I stopped sharing via Plaxo when business contacts saw what I wanted friends to see. Really, even though I know everything I publish is available to all, I'd ike to make it a little harder for some to find.
  
• Paper journals are still OK as not all things you think need to be availalbe online. Still some suggest anonymous blogs are good spots to rant.
  

At the end of mrontemp's post is a link to Why I Publish, Last night was the first time I ran across mrontemp (I think) but I still found the discussion on the value of autopublishing vs writing something original intriguing.

Does anyone hear that tree fall? Me talk?

He quotes Alexander van Elsas, who dislikes Friendfeed for its lack of intention:

If I see something that I know my friend really likes and then share it intentionally with him, it provides us both with value. But if I spill my guts to the world without thinking about what I’m sharing it makes most of the things I share pretty worthless.

Has Alexander just figured out why so many are perplexed when first confronted by that Facebook status box or the Twitter request for what are you doing?

Lucky you. I waited long enough before getting all of my thoughts together I can share two more finds. The first is thanks to Susan Beebee, who earlier in the week wrote a post on the Top 200 Social Media Blogs, and then tweeted about Matthew Webster Ray's post on Your Social Networks Have Different Audiences. Says Ray:

"You have different audiences on your social networks - and your normal friends are not on the 15 different social networks that you are on! Play it safe and only post things on the social networking platform that fits that audience."

Time to get rid of clutter

So I know what's I've been doing during the down time in my daughter's cancer battle (chemo is done; surgery two weeks off) to trim services and figure out how to participate more fully in the ones that I choose to continue with.

The thinking about how I participate is just one of the reasons why I like Jay Rosen's post on mindcasting on Twitter. He explains why he started using Twitter, how he uses it, the difference between mindcasting and lifecasting and more. He offers a good set of links to help showcase how he got from there to here.

Just as he jumped into Twitter to better understand it, I've been jumping into new sites and services for a long time. I'm surrounded by online clutter and it is starting to bother me the way a messy desk once did. Time for a purge.