Better Off Jed

Until recently, I only had a LinkedIn account. LinkedIn is more of a business focused, social networking site. I mainly use it to keep in touch with ex-coworkers.

An ex-coworker sent me an invitation to create a Facebook account. I had been doing all I could to avoid creating a Facebook or MySpace account — especially MySpace, because I think MySpace is such a mess. However, I was curious, so I decided to create a Facebook account. I’m not even exactly sure how to use it for anything other than finding friends yet. I know there is a ton of mini-applications you can add to your profile page, but I haven’t bothered yet. I don’t even have my picture up there yet.

The real problem is that there are a ton of these sites. Just recently I received invitations to join two sites I had never heard of:  Naymz (Reputation Management and Networking for Professionals) and Plaxo Pulse (Stay in touch with the people you care about). I’m overwhelmed. I don’t want to join these sites, but I feel bad that by not accepting the invitations, I’m somehow “rejecting” the people that invited me. I think I’ll get over it though and they probably won’t care. The funny thing is that all of the social networking invitations I get are from people I was already connected to on LinkedIn. How many different ways do we need to be connected?

I think Facebook and LinkedIn are enough for me for now.