Streamlining web presence

Entering a sweltering hall at seventeen there’s no way I would have made a connection between a University/Careers Prospectus Fair and the current state of my web presence. As I walked through the hall, teaming with confused minds belonging to both students and sellers, physical and metaphorical arms tried to reach out to me. ‘Come and join the army, we’ll pay for everything, except your life. Sign up to Nottingham, our prospectus was designed by an artist.’

The same thing has happened to my online life. I must belong to a least a dozen social networks, forums, rss feeds, and mailing lists etc but to make any of them really worthwhile you can’t just take. Like the best relationships, communication, mutual interests and attraction are key. I’m not saying I want to make sweet love to my Facebook page or Tumblr account but investing some time will obviously result in positive results/searches/babies?


The problem is, there are too many. I talked about having it all in my iGoogle page and only stepping out of that to daringly press the StumbleUpon button but that’s not ‘giving’ enough from a community standpoint. Realistically, if you’re going to belong to things like Mixx, Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Tumblr etc you really should contribute.

‘Time!’ I hear you cry in an impotent rage fuelled by modern living. Yeah, me too. So what are we to do? In the same way whacky middle class people, ‘downshift’ to the country or somewhere else they don’t need to keep up with the Jones,’ we too can digitally downshift.

This weekend maybe, I’m going to give some serious thought as to how many accounts I really need. In the same way you might analyse your monthly spend, or do a spring clean, I’m going to give some real thought to which communities, rss feeds and widgets I really need in my life, if I’m to have one at all. Praise be to the Google God.