iGerard FTW

[Image via Textually.org]

I was on Ping.fm, about to ping a status across the board, when I started thinking about the number of Social Networking sites I’m on. Currently on Ping.fm I’m pinging Brightkite, Facebook, FriendFeed, hi5, Identi.ca, Jaiku, kwippy, LinkedIn, Mashable, Myspace, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, and last but DEFINITELY not least, Twitter.

I got to thinking, out of all of those sites, which ones do I actually use on a daily basis? If I were to visit ALL of the sites I use in socialMe, it’d be overkill. In fact, it would have to be a full-time job to have to keep up with it all. The main sites I use are Twitter (obviously), Facebook, and FriendFeed. I used to use Brightkite but as-of-late I’ve started to get comfy with Loopt; once Brightkite makes an iPhone app I’ll probably move back. I’ve also ressurected my Myspace account to reach my Myspace audience, which suprisingly is large; I usually point Myspace to the younger demographic (10-16).

Obviously, this led me to ask, why do I have all of these accounts and not use them? My first answer is to reach a larger audience. Twitter has a large user base already, but there are other users out there that use Plurk or Jaiku more than Twitter. I want to everyone in the world to know my name, so naturally I make an account on those sites. Thinking deeper, my first answer was a good one, but not what led me to sign up for the sites initially. Everyone, by now, has been acquainted with the Fail Whale I assume. So when Twitter goes down, we all flock to another site.

Oh okay, so that’s why I signed up!

Yes, one of the reasons, but not the one I was looking for. Then it hit me! After recovering from the blow from the candle falling on my foot, I remembered why I signed up for Plurk. Leo Laporte sent a tweet over the airwaves asking everyone to join him on Plurk. When I saw the “LeoLaporte” name and the words “join me” I quickly launched Mobile Safari. I was sitting in Moe’s eating lunch, surfing as fast as EDGE would let me. Ignoring the conversations that were going on, most of which were directed at me, I was tapping away at my iPhone signing up for my account. Finally when it was all over I went back to my conversations, setting a reminder to check out Plurk when I get home. It was a similar situation with FriendFeed. I got Robert Scoble’s tweet about how he was ignoring Twitter and moving almost exclusively to FriendFeed. Two minutes later I had a Friend Feed account. Both of these tweets, by the way, were done when Twitter was experiencing (almost expected at the time) the fail whale.

So, for most of the sites that I now don’t use, I signed up almost instantaneously because big names in SocialMe and New Media mentioned them. I do somewhat feel like a sheep, but I do have readers that use other services more than Twitter and reach my media from there. I also move to these sites when Twitter experiences downtime, thankfully not as often now. Even though I do have all of these accounts, I like many always move back to Twitter.

Why do I use Twitter? I feel it’s a great service with an already large – and may I add extremely loyal – fan base, there are many tools for bloggers and socialMe fiends like myself that integrate seamlessly with it, and there are many native programs for both Mac and Windows for the service. Yes, Plurk is more stable and has a different take on the time-line, Brightkite has location based services, and FriendFeed binds all of the services together, but I’m always going back to Twitter in the end. So, for now, I’ll stick with it and Ping.fm.

What are your thoughts on the socialMe circuit?

By the way, the new Ping.fm beta code is “thispingsforyou”