I think it’s a false proposition to look for one clear winner among the big-player social networks, the one network that will destroy all the others. Yet this is what many tech and social media bloggers persist in trying to do, as if the social web were a horse race that at some point will clearly be over, instead of a place that is constantly evolving and growing.

There is room for many kinds of networks on the social web because the primary job of these networks is to connect people, and there are many types of people. No one network can be all things to all people, nor should it try to be. For instance, Google+ seems to appeal more to introverted types (like me; full disclosure), while Facebook attracts more extroverts. Pinterest is geared toward people who think visually; Twitter is for those who prefer a rapid-fire flow of information.

Not only do different types of networks work better for different types of people, but no one of us fits into a neatly labeled box all of the time. That’s why many of us like to move between networks as our needs dictate, even though we may have one primary place where we hang out most of the time. I definitely prefer Google+ for most sharing, but Twitter is a good place to exchange links or read breaking news, and on Facebook, I can keep up with an extended circle of friends and family.

So I don’t see much point in the endless articles dissecting why Google+ has so many followers as compared to Facebook, or what people think of Twitter or Pinterest. In this space, there is room for multiple winners. Still, blogs don’t seem to be going away anytime soon, and blogs must be filled with content, so I’m sure we’ll continue to be inundated with these meaningless pieces pitting the social networks against one another or lauding the latest newcomer as the giant killer.

As long as a network has a strong idea of its own identity and remembers who its primary user base is — and doesn’t stray too far afield of that by trying to be all possible things to all possible users — it can probably survive and even thrive in this crowded space. Until the social web is supplanted by something utterly new and unpredictable, that is.

However, as more people have joined the network, I have noticed how much harder it is to keep up with all the content flowing in. You can add people to circles divided by subjects of interest, but all that content is still pumped into your main stream. If you follow any particularly prolific posters, it can soon become overwhelming.

That’s why I was glad I discovered the Plus Minus extension for Google Chrome. This handy tool lets me control via simple checkboxes which circles contribute content to my main stream. Whenever I log onto Google+, only the posts that come from the people who are most important to me show up on the main page. Another useful tool provided by Plus Minus is the ability to “shrink” posts, so that I can hide what I’ve already read or what I’m not interested in just by clicking an arrow.

Now that I can control the firehose of posts going into my main stream, I found that it was also necessary to control my reading. Otherwise, I’d browse Google+ all day and never do anything else. I created circles around my primary interests, such as news, geeky stuff, cooking, politics and books. I assigned each circle a day of the week, and on that day, I only pick posts from its corresponding circle to read. This helps me focus on the reading rather than feeling like I have to wade through an ocean of content.

As for posting, I try to post one or two public items per day so that potential followers know what kind of content I’m sharing. For the rest, I try to confine posting to that circle of interest. Personal posts typically are limited to friends and family. This takes advantage of Google+’s most powerful feature: circles. If you are in my Geeks circle, you’ll only see my science and tech posts; you won’t be bothered by cooking or political content. Of course, many people occupy multiple circles. Fortunately, when I shrink a post in one circle using the Plus Minus extension, it stays closed across all circles, so I don’t see it multiple times.

With Plus Minus, Google+ has become more fun and more manageable. I definitely prefer the content I’m seeing there to what can be found on Twitter, which isn’t meaty enough, or Facebook, which usually isn’t relevant to me. Of course, if I still want to share on other networks, there is a service for that: Plusist. It automates posting of public Google+ items to either Facebook or Twitter, or both.

My first reaction: Whoa, I like this! Google+ looks a lot like Facebook’s more mature older brother, the one with a real job. It is a clean interface, not cluttered with all the garbage that comes with Facebook, and everything is very easy and intuitive to use. It’s a pleasure to browse.

What I specifically like:

• Circles are great! Circles are Google’s metaphor for different groups of people you want to network with. It is so easy to drag and drop any contact into a circle. Then, you can choose which circle to share with when you post a link, photo, video or note. For instance, I can share photos of my kid being adorable just with my Friends and Family circles, arrange playgroups with my Neighbors circle, and trade interesting links with my Net Friends circle. Circles are not only intuitive, they mimic the way we interact socially in real life better than any other social network I’ve seen.
• Hangouts are just cool! Hangouts provide a way to video chat with any circle of contacts. It is so easy to use. I was able to set this up and start chatting in less than a minute. You just open up a hangout and wait for others from your circle to join you. This is a great tool for virtual teams or for far-flung friends and family.

Now, here’s what I want:

• Google Buzz no longer seems necessary. I want Google+ to replace Buzz and do what Buzz does. Specifically, I want to be able to easily share items from Google Reader to my circles.
• Since I now use so many Google tools, I would love to make Google+ my hub on the Internet. But I know that not all of my contacts are going to migrate over. So I need an easy way to broadcast what I share on Google+ to Twitter, Facebook and my blogs. (There is an extension for Chrome that allows me to send posts to Twitter and Facebook, but I’d like to see it built in so it’s less awkward.)
• I’m not yet sure what value Sparks adds. Sparks are items pulled from the web on subjects of interest, but right now, there doesn’t seem to be any good way to refine or customize this list. Maybe I need to play with it more.
• I’d like more people from Facebook/Twitter to join! Once Google+ opens up to a wider group of users, I’d love it if they’d make it easy for me to invite my contacts from other social networking sites. Right now, you can only easily add your Google Contacts to circles.
• By default, I think there are too many email notifications, but this is easily remedied. To turn off any of the notifications, click the little wheel in the top right corner and choose Google+ Settings.
• Oh, one more thing: Real-time updating of my stream would be real, real nice. Come on, Google! (Done!)

All in all, I’m very excited about the possibilities of Google+. So, when can I drop my Facebook account for good?

Google doesn’t seem to be sending out invitations right now for Google+, due to insane demand. If you happen to get on and want to invite your friends, here is a sneaky way to do it (and this is how I got in).

But after a month or so, my Facebook usage waned. All the Farmville and quiz status updates were annoying. I started getting weird spam and friend invites from people I didn’t remember knowing. To tell you the truth, I just felt more comfortable on Twitter.

Now I hardly ever visit Facebook at all, but I still update it now and then. It really is the only way I can stay in touch online with a large group of people. Mostly I share information about my kid or photos of him from TotSpot. I never visit pages anymore, or play games, or take quizzes. I stay off Facebook as much as possible.

Given this week’s news, I’m glad I’ve limited my exposure. Facebook is now trying to integrate itself with the web at large, and it needs our data to do it. It wants us to “like” things on partner sites. Our “like” data will probably be sold to marketers, who will turn around and try to sell us more things. I don’t know about you, but I am fed up with people trying to sell me stuff all the time.

I will stay on Facebook, just because it is the most convenient way to keep in touch with some people. But I will use the site even less now. I have tried to make my settings as private as possible. Here’s what I did.

All of these settings are available under the Account tab (upper right corner). Click “Privacy Settings.”

• I clicked on Personal Information and Posts and changed each option to Only Friends can see, except for my bio.
• I clicked on Contact Information and made sure my phone numbers and email address were visible only to friends or only to me. I also made sure Only Friends could send me a message.
• I clicked on Friends, Tags and Connections and set everything to Only Friends. Except for Photos and Videos of Me — I set this to Only Me so no one will see any potentially embarrassing photos of me tagged with my name.
• I clicked on Applications and Websites and then What Your Friends Can Share About You and unchecked every box.
• Also under Applications and Websites, I changed Activity on Applications and Games Dashboards to Only Friends.
• Also under Applications and Websites, I unchecked the box to join the new Instant Personalization Pilot Program, which shares your “like” data with other companies.

Finally, under the Account tab, I selected “Application Settings.” In the Show menu (top right, above the applications list), I selected “Authorized.” This shows every application and website you’ve authorized to see your Facebook data. I deleted every application or website I didn’t recognize or know I don’t use.

I did not edit my employer, school or interest pages, because I considered them fairly innocuous or so broad as to be useless to marketers. But this may be a concern for some, especially people with unpopular political views or unusual hobbies. There’s a lot of good information about how to protect yourself in this post.

How to Restore Your Privacy on Facebook (Gawker)

The only way you can guarantee online privacy is to avoid free services, including all social networks, altogether. But you need an email account, for instance. Well, there are many alternatives to the free email services. Your ISP, who you are paying to provide Internet service to you, will probably give you one. Or you can pay for an email account with a hosting company. The point is, when you pay for a service, then you have a right to expect a higher level of privacy, as agreed upon between you and the company. (Many people use a free email account for public transactions, like online purchases, and keep a private email account for, well, private communications.)

If you do decide to get a free email account or sign up with a social network, then you should accept right off the bat that you will be giving up some privacy. That is the deal with the devil you make in exchange for free access to these networks. You will no longer have total control over information about you and that you generate. It is best to know this and accept this from the start.

Personally, I like the openness that social networks have brought. I think it fosters communication, collaboration, sharing and understanding of our differences, but that is the idealist in me. Yes, there is a negative side, but that is true of anything with value. I think social networks help us express who we are, and feel okay with who we are.

But if you are going to use these services, and privacy is of some importance to you, then you need to become savvy about how they work. When you sign up for a service, you need to be willing to explore, play with settings, try things and see what happens, and learn what the service is doing and why. This means extra work, but as I said, it is not in these companies’ interest to protect your privacy, so you can’t expect it of them. It only took me five minutes of playing with Google Buzz to figure out that my followers were listed on my public profile and to turn that off. That was well before all the privacy warnings came out.

I have some sympathy for people whose email contacts were exposed by Buzz, because this was not an expected outcome. But only to a point. Because you had to participate in that exposure. You had to set up a free Gmail account. You had to turn on Buzz. You had to create a public Google Profile. You had to accept the list of followers/following presented to you by Buzz without making any changes to remove those who were not acceptable to you. At each point, you could stop and ask yourself what the privacy implications of this are. At the very least, you could wait a few days for the issues to surface. It was only a few hours before many news outlets on the web were posting about Buzz’s privacy issues and the fixes for them.

I think this is a good learning moment for all of us. By all means, play in the social networking playground. But remember that these free services still have a cost. Just like in the real world, online the only one you can count on to take care of yourself is you.

Google’s response to the privacy concerns and instructions for protecting your privacy when using Buzz. And Google may offer Buzz independently from Gmail.

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Now when millions of people use your software and you’ve still gotta fiddle, well, you’re going to upset some (or many) of your users. I’ve noticed that three websites I use frequently have been mightily fiddled with recently.

First up is Google Reader. First, they introduced a “like” button (a la Facebook) on articles and some additional sharing features, including making it easier to follow people’s shared items. Now they’ve added a Popular Items section, moved the Recommendations for new blogs to the left sidebar (called Recommended Sources) and added a new sort for articles: Sort by Magic.

I actually like most of the changes here. The Google Reader interface still works pretty much as it always has, with just a few new geegaws, so it hasn’t slowed down my browsing any. I magically found some cool people to follow, and the Popular Items section is a great way to kill a dull Sunday afternoon looking at cute pics, fails and funny cartoons without actually having to subscribe to any of those bourgeois feeds. I turned on “sort by magic,” and to tell the truth, I don’t notice any difference in the sort order, but I love the name. My grade: A.

Facebook’s changes aren’t nearly so intuitive. They’ve instituted two feeds, a Live Feed, which shows all your friends’ status updates, and a News Feed, which is supposedly the most interesting items from the past day. I find them both equally murky, and now I’m always vaguely suspicious that I’m missing something.

I was pretty much over Facebook, anyway. My friend calls it a “very clever Rolodex,” and that’s how I’ve started to treat it, only visiting when I get a message or need to look someone up. For day-to-day status updates, I get much more value out of Twitter. My grade on the Facebook changes: C-.

Quick tip: You can restore Facebook to (more or less) its old look. On your Home page, in the top left corner, drag Status Updates to the top of the nav bar and then click on it (you may have to click on the tiny “More” to show the Status Updates option).

Finally, I’ve been using StumbleUpon for a very long time as an archive of links I’ve liked, and I think I have 1,400+ links stored there. I also use Delicious for active research and projects, but StumbleUpon is more of an archive of old links for me. And the redesign has me baffled. I can never tell what interface is going to appear when I click “Stumble It.” I don’t know whether I’ll get the option to assign categories or write a review or if the stumble will even work. It’s all way too confusing and basically makes me want to abandon the site altogether. My grade: F.

If there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that everything will change, whether we like it or not. And if there’s a software developer involved, the changes will be frequent, random and usually come without warning. We might as well get used to it.

Here are some causes I like that you might want to join:

• Advocate that the U.S. government more broadly support Open Source technologies.
• Free your cell phone from the restrictive policies and outrageous fees of wireless companies.
• Tweet your Senator to let him/her know that you support healthcare reform.
• Use Twitter, Facebook and blogs to organize a boycott, like this boycott on Whole Foods in response to their CEO’s editorial against healthcare reform.
• Other causes on Facebook.

Once you’ve picked your cause, head over to Twibbon to display a ribbon proudly on your Twitter avatar.

Just in the past few months, I have seen blog posts complaining about being judged on all of the following decisions:

• not to have children
• to have only one child
• to have many children
• to work and put children in daycare
• to stay at home with the children
• mothers using their children’s photos for the profile pictures on Facebook (one of the sillier examples)
• to eat a vegetarian diet
• to eat organic foods
• to eat local foods
• to eat at McDonald’s
• not to own a television
• to watch television
• to watch particular television shows

And it goes on and on.

I think there are two underlying reasons for so much judgment. One is personal: The judger is insecure about their own personal choices, so when yours are in opposition, they see that — often erroneously — as a judgment by you on them. For instance, if you declare that you don’t own a TV, those people who do own a TV and feel bad about how much television they watch might see your statement as an indictment on what they do. Even if you never intended it that way.

The other reason is societal. Judgment is a very effective means of getting people to adhere to societal norms. Deviance is punished by public shame, with the intention of avoiding oh-so-scary change. Turn on any morning news show or cable news network and you will see a lot of judgment going on, for this very reason.

You can’t change the judgers. It’s futile to even try. I have found a much more effective means of dealing with them: Cultivate blissful ignorance. Simply ignore the snide comment or disapproving glance that may or may not have been sent your way. Soon enough, you’ll stop seeing them altogether. Have confidence in your choices, and discount the opinions of everyone else, except those of your nearest and dearest, the people in your circle whom you really trust. It doesn’t really matter what strangers think. And you’ll be much happier if you just don’t care.

Yesterday our local radio show “The State of Things” devoted an entire hour to Facebook. Which means that we both are officially way behind the times.

One issue that was discussed was the problem of juggling multiple identities on Facebook when friends from all your different “worlds” — like work, school, hanging out, family, even your mom — come together and can see your status updates. How do you keep all of your personas straight?

I think this is a non-problem. One of the goals of life should be to discover who we are and then try to live as authentically as we can. At least, this is one of the goals of my life. That doesn’t mean that we don’t grow and change over time. I am certainly not the same person I was in high school, and I am thankful for that.

What it does mean is that if you’re struggling to present one persona to the people you work with and another to your afterwork friends and another to your family, then something is off. In one or more spheres of your life, you are not being true to yourself.

I am not saying that we should reveal 100% of who we are on Facebook or any other social networking site. Facebook is a public forum, so baring your soul there would be no more appropriate than it would at a conference or a cocktail party. What I am saying is that we should just be who we are, at all times, no matter who we are interacting with. I have generally found that most people like and respect this, and those that don’t — probably I don’t want to be interacting with them after all. Besides, it’s a lot less exhausting to just be yourself rather than trying to be what everyone else expects you to be.

And then you don’t really have to worry about who is reading your status updates.

My social media map

(I used bubbl.us, which is a really intuitive, easy-to-use, free mind-mapping tool.)

This doesn’t show all my social media sites, just the ones I use most regularly. But it did help me organize my social media efforts, at least in my own head. The black lines show everything that feeds into FriendFeed, which is my nexus and the most complete view of what I’m doing online. The gray lines show which services are being automagically updated by which other services, usually via an RSS feed or FriendFeed’s automatic output to Twitter.

I organized my social media universe into four quadrants. My home quadrant (tan) — my blogs but also my Google Profile – are my home bases on the Web and also where the world finds me. My networks quadrant (green) have organized quite naturally into a professional network that I use only occasionally (LinkedIn), a network of friends and family I know in real life (Facebook) and an online network with many overlaps with the other two networks that I use most frequently and is the largest (Twitter).

My links quadrant (purple) are my tools for collecting and sharing links. I read blog posts and other articles via RSS feed in Google Reader every day, and share interesting finds out to my network. Delicious is where I permanently store links and do research. StumbleUpon is more of a historical record of links I’ve blogged about, plus a lot of random fun stuff I discover while surfing the web.

Finally, there are miscellaneous tools that reflect my hobbies in the pink quadrant. I’m an avid reader, so I have several tools for organizing and recording my reading and books (LibraryThing, Lists of Bests, All Consuming), which feed back to my books blog and sometimes Twitter. I also use tools to track my goals (43 Things) and travel (43 Places), and to upload my photos (Flickr).

Of course, not everything is on here. I didn’t include really miscellaneous places like my Amazon Wishlist or Bookmooch, or places I rarely visit like Digg or Technorati. But it is nice being able to visualize my little online universe and my place within it.