I am not easy to peg to any one identity. I am a media creator. I run a small, free unconference. I run a big professional conference. I work for an Internet TV startup. I’m a dad. I live in a small town. I live in Massachusetts. I write for Lifehack.org. I blog here, there, everywhere.
For social networks, how do I absorb these relationships, and then manage them?
When I do a quick scan of my LinkedIN, it contains people I know from my pro conference, people I know from my previous jobs, people I know from the podcasting community. It doesn’t let ME group them. I have to take the service’s representations for themselves. I guess I need something different.
Twitter doesn’t let me have any groups or identity management or what not.
Relationships Without Borders
On the other side, there are relationships that span companies. For instance, what if I’m working on a project that involves other organizations than my own? Products like 37 Signals’ HighRise take that into account.
But what about me? What about a guy who has his hands in a lot of different things? How can I manage my various digital relationships simply, such that I know who’s who, I know who to bug about what, and I have an easy way to reach out to these groups across software platforms?
Should I keep multiple identities? Should I build accounts with post-fixes of which hat I’m wearing?
Your Turn
How would YOU solve this? If you’re part of the Social Networks Architecture Project (and that means YOU decide that you are, because it’s your project), then what can you do to help me solve this problem? I need some solution that allows me to send messages to people in various contexts, that allows me to update status or send events for those contexts.
Is this a problem you need to solve, too?
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