Like everyone else, I’ve got accounts on all the social sites just to see what they’re like. I haven’t visited my MySpace account in months, I check my Facebook page every couple of weeks, and pay no attention to any of the others I’ve signed up for unless they ping me for some reason. This past year, a lot of our students and alums are signing up on Plaxo and friending me into their professional network. I always dutifully reply and occasionally scan the list of their latest activities.
One of Plaxo’s bits of viral genius is that it looks at who you’re connected to and who they connect to and suggests other people you should add to your network. Imagine my surprise when I logged in a few days ago and saw “Bernie Dodge” as someone I may know that I should consider connecting to. Apparently I have two Plaxo accounts going, one with 11 connections, the other with 20, and some people are connected to both of me.
So I suppose I need to kill off the less-connected me and I’m wondering about several things:
- Will Plaxo let me delete myself? (Turns out that it did!)
- Will anyone notice that I’ve disappeared off their list?
- When people die, are their heirs supposed to close out all their accounts so that people will stop writing to them?
- Should there be a special Plaxo subsection for people who’ve moved to Borneo or Hell and won’t be reachable any more? A place where they can be remembered but no longer begged for a reference letter?
- Could I become a billionaire by setting up a social network of social networks, a directory of everyone’s social pages with an indication of the last time they checked it and how scanty their profile is? One stop shopping for finding the best way to connect with someone?
Clearly while thinking about these things I’m avoiding some committee work I should be doing.