There’s a massive array of social media tools and networks out there and it seems to me that there’s also a perceived pressure among digital natives to be actively involved in all of them.

But perhaps we are starting to enter an age of more Discerning Social Networking.  Which means not only sharing our lives and interacting only with the groups we really care about, but using and integrating only the social networking tools that really work for us.

For example, I tried out Twitter 18 months ago but at the time it didn’t really do much for me.  So although I still keep my eye on a few Twitterers via RSS feeds, I’ve deleted my account.  I have profiles on facebook and LinkedIn with links to my personal blog, but I’m not on myspace or bebo.  I use flickr, but mostly via a feed into my blog’s sidebar as well as using RSS to view my friend’s latest pics. 

In short, I’m choosing to use the tools that work for me and interacting with them in whichever way suits my needs best.  Maybe the ways in which we chose to interact with social networking sites will become as important as the actual social interactions which happen via them? 

posted by gemmaT