List #28 – Cancel extra s.n.s. (social networking sites)

After I created The Guild, I put my toe into the waters of web as a PERSON. Before that, I’d remained mostly anonymous and private. I’m really glad I decided to be more social with the internet, because it has created this blog, as well as connected me with old friends and new. BUT when you say “yes” to everything, you become a slave to maintaining all those connections. I’ve felt overwhelmed a lot, scattered, and this is partially because I have a lot of “internet homework” to do. Things slip through the cracks, and I feel guilty when I neglect things, like the forums for the Flog, or stray email that accidentally gets archived.

Also, I realized my problem with social networking sites. Early on, I decided to accept whatever friend request came through, because I could use the service to message/bulletin about The Guild or other acting things. I don’t use it as a social resource, which prevents me from checking out other people’s pages, as I would if I only had 25 close friends.

With #28 I put my foot down! Arg! I canceled the following services today:

• Friendster (Pics of my friend with her ex-husband indicate NO ONE is still on this service)
• Pownce (Twitter won because of blog plug-in and sheer # of contacts)
• Hi5 (What?! When did I join this?!)
• NetLog (Best place to get hit on by skeevy italian teens)

The company who makes it possible to consolidate all the services into one place will win my heart. For now, I just bookmarked all the sites I need to check in one folder, and twice a week I will make the rounds, hopefully having time to check out a few friends’ pages on the way.

Then, I was on a roll. Oh boy. I went through my email trash and unsubscribed to every catalogue and newsletter that I auto delete upon sight. I will make this a habit to nip wanton emails like this in the bud. Bottom line, my time is valuable, and I’d rather spend it doing a point and click game than wasting it on things that make me go “Ugh, THAT?!” when they land with a dirty thud in my inbox. I have all but my yahoo mail being filtered to my gmail account, so I have maximum efficiency on the email front.

I guess you could say that this list item morphed into:

• #28 – Internet Manifesto: I will rule my net life, not let it rule me.

Good things happened because of this mission as well! Stumbling around, I happened to find the perfect resource that, just a month ago, I said to myself, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could…” Well, wish fulfilled! Thanks to Google Alerts I set up a search on “The Guild” and now can have an email delivered daily on people’s links, mentions etc. about my show to my inbox. No more hand-Google once a week and searching through already clicked links to read about press, thank people in blog mentions etc…it’s great!

If anyone has any other efficiency tips about consolidating services, streamlining and centralizing, post them here! For now, strikeout item #28!  (edit because that was confusing before, lolz)