When Do Social Networks Become a Burden?

But for the rest of us, an interesting trend is accelerating in which more and more groups are adding social networking "communities" or areas of interest at work. No, the idea is not totally new – we’ve had "birds of a feather" meetings at conferences for years. However the 2012 difference is that just about everyone is starting to create new online communities. It can become overwhelming to keep up, if you’re not careful.

But at what point does joining a social network become a burden? Clearly, I’m not the first to ask this question – nor will I be the last. A google search of "how many social networks are too many?" yields 112 million results. Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

How many social identities are too many?

NPR - How many social identities are too many? - "Okay, so you're on Facebook and Twitter, and you tweet and you blog and you think you're, oh, so courant. Nevertheless faster than you can lay off half the staff of MySpace, up pops a new specialized social community like Beluga from Mobile messaging, with just a private group of friends. That's a cool one. And Instagram, for sharing photos; or how about Path, a so-called personal network, limited to just 50 friends; or Audioboo for sharing audio? Using any of those?

Well, if so, you - do you have a different personality for each one, different networks for all those different things? And how do you manage that? How do you decide where to post that snowman picture that you just took in the blizzard? Better for Facebook or Tumblr? Where do you post your Super Bowl commercial pick this year, Second Life or Twitter?

Social Media or Social Burden? – "I have often been asked the question on my social networks ‘How do you get so many friends/followers/connections? Then – the truth is…I am famous and am hiding it from the world…not!

"When you see as many apps as we do at RWW, you begin to feel like it's all been done. So many of the day in day out jobs for apps to do can already be done by for the moment one app. How many ways can you share photos with your friends? How many social networks and check-ins and restaurant-discovery services do we need?

Lately, we've started to see a new class of app emerge just for managing these tasks across their various apps. The idea of apps for our apps sounds ridiculous, nevertheless some of them are neat, and some are downright lifesavers. Here's a round-up of apps you should use if you want to bring your many social networks into one dedicated place…."

The bigger issue is how do we share ideas with the needed levels of trust and openness? In exchange how do we ensure the right level of security and innovation to not share with those who are competitors and/or are not in a "need to know" situation? Can we organize things better? Join forces or merge portals? Do more with less?

Complex topic

Understanding social networks can become a complex topic. There’s a lot of competition for our time at home and work. I’d love to hear ideas from readers on how you make these decisions. I’m not sure that I know the answer on this one.

Building effective virtual government requires new ideas and hard work. Security professionals need to be enablers of technology. From helpful Internet training to defending cloud computing architectures to securing mobile devices, Dan Lohrmann will cover what's hot and what's not in protecting your corner of cyberspace.