Something I’ve been reading a lot about recently is the idea of social network aggregators. Similar in concept to news and blog aggregators, these apps allow users to manage their various social networking accounts in one place. On the surface, this seems like a great solution for someone who maintains an active Web presence spread across multiple networks. But if you dig a little deeper, you realize that it might not be that simple.
ag·gre·gate (ăg’rĭ-gĭt)
n.
1. A total considered with reference to its constituent parts; a gross amount: “An empire is the aggregate of many states under one common head” (Edmund Burke).
v. tr.
1. To gather into a mass, sum, or whole.
I keep profiles on MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, YouTube, and, more recently, Bebo, LinkedIn, and aNobii: all social networks. And I have to admit, it’s a pain to keep up with seven different user names and passwords. How simple it would be to have one place to log in where I could check up on all my networks. But there are a couple of problems.
- Diluting the Experience
When you remove yourself from the individual interfaces of each service, you run the risk of removing yourself from participation. Your social network aggregator will homogenize your experience and become just another news reader. Instead of reading the news of the world, you’ll be reading the news of your friends, without adding to the conversation. - Crossing the Streams
Say you’ve got a music profile on MySpace, a business profile on LinkedIn, and a personal profile on Facebook. These are three distinct aspects of your personality that you probably don’t want to mix. Or at the very least, you’d like to keep your business life separate. If all of your social networks are aggregated, a prospective employer or a fan of your music might be turned off by something they find there. There’s something to be said about segregating the various aspects of your life. - Who Aggregates the Aggregators?
What is MySpace? It’s an aggregator. You can have your music, your blog, your photos, and your friends all under the same umbrella. And the killer function of MySpace is the ability to share all your cool stuff with your friends. If you use a platform like Spokeo to manage your social networking accounts, chances are you’ll have something cool on Friendster you want to share with your MySpace buddy. So you invite him to join Spokeo, and then you’ve turned your aggregator into a social network. Since there will never be a universal social networking platform (some like MySpace, some like Facebook, etc.), the impulse to bring them all to one interface is misguided. You’ll just keep creating networks once removed and on and on down the slippery slope.
What I’m saying is, the dynamic, participatory nature of social networks precludes easy aggregation. So with all these conversations at our fingertips, what can we do to help organize it all? Start with your browser.
My browser of choice is Firefox, and I have my bookmark toolbar set up with a “Daily Stops” folder with links to all of my networks. Firefox will also manage my various passwords, taking that hassle out of my hands. So checking in on each profile is as simple as clicking seven links. It’s pretty easy.
Every developer in the world has their eyes peeled for the Next Big Thing, and some think that social network aggregation is where it’s at. But even though it looks great on paper, doesn’t mean that it’s a great idea.
