I made a short video last week outlining my thoughts on the LinkedIn and Twitter deal. At the time I advocated the move, as it seemed like a natural progression. I’ve since read a piece by Steve Rubel who argues for standardised status update syncing and I’ve rethought my position somewhat. Social media is meant to be about narrowcasting – a specific message tailored for a niche audience where we’re moving away from a ‘one size fits all approach’ of traditional broadcasting. In his post, Rubel briefly advocates the use of sites like ping.fm which allow you to post content across a (very) wide range of social networks. This is not what social media is.

The beauty of social media is that it allows you to reach niche audiences, real people, across a range of platforms. Crucially, it is also about listening. I fail to see the value in sites such as ping.fm where you are essentially broadcasting your own message. Social media is not about simply getting your own message out there, as quickly as possible to as many people. If we’re not careful, we will soon become victims of ‘push marketing’ ourselves as we hope to reach the widest possible range of people. Where’s the conversation in this?

I have never chosen to synch my updates between Twitter and Facebook, I will never do it for LinkedIn ( I tested it once) and I personally react pretty negatively when I see people doing the same. You’re on these platforms to converse, to engage with people. What’s the point in an update like this on Twitter?

“Facebook : Amy just watched Couple’s Retreat and loved it.”

Where’s the value in that to me? This is a hypothetical message, but I see it all the time. You didn’t tell me on Twitter, but what if I want to comment, do I do it over Twitter when you couldn’t be bothered to log in yourself and do it, or am I forced to log in to Facebook and comment there? Syncing is messy and ultimately discourages conversation. If I’m going to get the most out of a social network platform, I’d say about 50% of my interaction will be replies or comments to other people. You simply don’t get this with syncing status updates.

Similarly, I can’t get my head around the insanity of scheduling Twitter updates through Hootsuite. If you’re not able to tweet because you’re on holiday or on a plane or for whatever reason, then simply don’t be a part of the conversation. You’ll still have friends when you’ll come back and the chances are you’re only going to annoy people because if you’re using scheduled tweets, you probably can’t reply anyway. There seems to be a bit of fear around not getting your own content in all the places, all the time. It really is okay to not be a part of the conversation some of the time.

We also need to consider the suitability of content. I don’t want to have the same conversations on Twitter as I do on LinkedIn or Facebook, for example. I’m on these different platforms for different reasons and the conversation will have a different tone. This isn’t about creating different personas online, but using the sites in the best way for me. I don’t want to send the same updates across all different social platforms because I’m using them in different ways. This isn’t to say that I wouldn’t discuss business issues on Twitter, for example, but the type of content would be different, suitable for my community on that platform. Not least because I’d like more than 140 characters to discuss industry news for example. You choose the platform and build the community that works for your needs. Just like I wouldn’t read the business section of a newspaper if I want a bit of light-hearted celebrity reading. I’d go to Heat magazine for that.

Obviously there will always be a crossover on content, I’m not pretending that I’m a completely different person across different social platforms and that information should be contained in neat silos. But unless you have a real reason for joining a site and want quality conversation, then don’t join. Don’t join for the sake of it and just push out the same content. I quit friendfeed for this reason. All I was seeing were automated Twitter updates and in all honesty, I couldn’t think of anything I’d want to say on there that I wouldn’t want to say on Twitter anyway. The point is that you have to choose the sites that work for you and use them to generate a conversation, not just as another place to push the same content.

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