Making sense of my social media presence - Its complicated

I met with a colleague, Lance Michalson, the other day and was describing the various social services I use for various purposes. The more I described my setup the more elaborate and confusing it seemed. When I thought about it I realised that much of the complexity was borne out of a Facebook distrust. Facebook has abused our trust so many times in the past I just didn’t want to entrust it with all my social and personal content and contact on the Web despite the simple fact that it is probably one of the most ubiquitous social networks on the Web today if you count mainstays like email and possibly IM/Chat? At 500+ million users and given Facebook’s increasing role as a platform, its not difficult to see Facebook as a dominant social platform for most people.

Social media profile

Lately I’ve felt a stronger need to simplify my work and life stuff. Its so easy to focus on tools and forget what I am supposed to be doing with those tools and just get stuff done. When it comes to Facebook I am beginning to wonder if my historical objections to using Facebook as the focal point of my online personal experience still apply? I have tended to prefer to publish my posts to my blog; my photos to Flickr and my video content to Vimeo or YouTube because I just haven’t felt comfortable that I could ever get it out of Facebook. I have also doubted whether Facebook can be trusted to handle it in a way I would be comfortable with going forward. I suppose a similar criticism could be leveled at other services I use so I find myself wondering, again, whether I can trust Facebook enough with my stuff?

Using Facebook as my primary platform for personal stuff would certainly simplify things. My profile is restricted to people I am actually friendly with or who are family members. I don’t “friend” people I haven’t met or know well enough to feel comfortable sharing my family life with.

We have different levels of privacy in the context of friends who aren’t really friends but are more connections and people who are real friends. To me that means I use platforms which share my stuff and stuff about me in varying degrees. My personal blog is where I share my thoughts about things and family stuff we’re happy to make public. My other blog is where I occasionally blog about non-family stuff and focus on gadgets and other stuff I like.

On top of all of that I also have my meta-profile pages here and here which give people an overview of where I am active.

I feel the need to consolidate, I’m just not too sure where.

Update: Sam Beckbessinger suggested I include content flows so I updated the diagram to this:

Social media profile

At 22 weeks, the SQL is growing nicely and seems to be as active as ever.  I wasn’t at the scan (I was presenting at the Moshito Music Conference) but Gina said theSQL weighs about half a kilo already and she is going strong.

The video quality has improved quite a bit.  Our doctor is using a new machine which has much higher resolution than before.  You can see the difference just by comparing this video with an earlier scan.

Many women get broody when they see babies.  I think being a Dad makes me feel whatever it is Dads feel when they see videos like this from a Dad to his child, in this case @IsaiahMustafa to his little girl.

Re: Haley | Old Spice (via OldSpice)

Source: youtube.com

Our Great Gautrain Adventure

I took Aaron on the Gautrain for our first time on Sunday. My brother was up in Joburg for our mom’s birthday on Saturday and instead of driving out to the airport, I suggested we take the Gautrain instead. It was a perfect opportunity to take Aaron for his first ride on the train (mine too) and see my brother off at the same time. Aaron was a little nervous when the train first pulled off and drove through a tunnel coming out of Sandton but he started to enjoy the experience once he climbed on to my lap.

The train travels through two stations between the Sandton Station and the O R Tambo station. If you are travelling to the airport, the doors to the airport cars don’t open. The ride there was apparently about 12 minutes as advertised and about 15 minutes from the airport to Sandton. Its a pretty smooth ride and definitely worth the R100 each way to avoid traffic, parking and the inevitable rush to check in.

I’d like to explore the Gautrain bus system next. I don’t see route maps on the Gautrain site but the buses are appealing if they go to the sorts of places we tend to frequent in major centres like Rosebank, Fourways and Randburg. At the moment the buses don’t run on weekends (heck, the whole system is pretty limited at the moment) but a more developed public transit system would be heavenly in an increasingly congested city.

Introducing our next great adventure, code-named #theSQL

Well, its official now, we are pregnant again! Following in the tradition of our first little one who we designated “Sprout” while he was making his way into the world, we have designated Aaron’s tiny sibling “theSQL” (official hashtag is #theSQL). Gina has just published the news on her blog in her post titled “How to fall pregnant in 12 easy steps”.

I’m not sure that this has sunk in with me just yet. It isn’t like theSQL is our first baby but it just hasn’t quite become a reality for me. We are expecting theSQL on 8 January 2011, give or take (Aaron arrived 4 weeks early), and while it is still a little early in the pregnancy, Gina is already starting to show so we couldn’t really keep in quiet for much longer.

2010-05-27 theSQL scan at 7 5 wks

US Airways Flight 1549 as it crash landed on the Hudson River last week.  Dramatic footage!

Videos show jet crash-landing - CNN.com

Source: CNN

One for business and one for pleasure

Okey dokey, gonna be using Viddler for business videos and Vimeo for personal.  YouTube is great but I want to try something different.