So in January, Ms. Herrscher began thinking about ways to apply the principles of Twitter to her site. She wanted something where her readers “wouldn’t have to dig through the millions of people on Twitter to find moms, or moms in their area or moms with their common interests,” she said. “It’s a smaller, manageable community.”

via A Twitter Spinoff Launches for Moms – Digits – WSJ.

So here’s the thing, all of these Twitter spin offs, Laconi.ca installations etc., are great. Yet they are missing two things, in my opinion, the community and the interconnectivity. The majority of people are on Twitter. Yes there is a following for spin off sites like Identi.ca and the TWIT Army (both of which I belong to), but the fact that Twitter has almost everyone on it and the developmental chops via the API makes it seem so much more powerful than it’s clones.

Though Rachael Herrscher might be on to something, I just feel that we’re dealing with an overload of social media sites. On a daily basis many of us are checking at least three if not more programs to follow people and get our news.

Personally these are the services that I use on a regular basis:

• Twitter (always open in Tweetdeck)
• Facebook (always open in a tap in Firefox)
• Linkedin (I jump back and forth when I get a notice or an email about something on the service)
• FriendFeed (when I’m not already overloaded)
• Google Reader (for Twitter search term feeds and blog updates)
• GMail (for my email)
• Delicious (to share sites that I find on a daily basis with the world)

Now that’s just on a daily basis and thankfully I’m still able to get my work done. Granted my business is closely tied to social media and the Internet so I’m able to suppliment my life with these services. But when is adding services causing more harm than good or even not contributing anything.

I’m also on theses sites (and I’m missing tons):

• Identi.ca ( a twitter clone network. Find me as GoldsteinMedia)
• Army.Twit.Tv (another Laconi.ca opensource Twitter clone run by Tech guru Leo Laporte of This Week In Tech and TechTV fame)

The solution, in my opinion, is not to stop innovating or making new services. The solution is to make all these clones and networks talk to each other (easily). That way people can interact on a broader scale without major time-consuming social media burnout.

I’m interested in what you think. Post your comments below.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – The Microsite Mistake from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

One of the first things and most time consuming tasks you’re going to need to do if you want to allow different people is to setup up groups for all of your friends and classify them. Below is how I have people grouped:

Now this grouping of people, especially for those who have been on Facebook for a long time, will be a bit painful but it’s well worth it especially when your job or even life might depend on it.

You first need to go to the privacy page in Facebook:

Once on that page you’ll see the different areas where you can set privacy levels:

We’re going to first go into the Profile property area:

As you see above, I have it setup so that only certain people can see certain information. The key to limiting certain peoples access in a more pin-point way goes back to spending the time setting up groups. You’ll see that I’ve limited some areas to exclude specific groups. This will keep them from seeing that particular part of information. This is great to make sure potential or current employers don’t see the pictures of you riding a bull at a bar or of your 21st birthday party.

Now the next step is to go to the second tab and do the same for your contact information.

When you’re done that we can move on to the more interactive parts of your profile.

When you first get your Facebook account, it is a clean slate and is about a pourus as a fishing net. Everything you do is completly transparent and everyone can see what you’re doing, who your doing it with, and… well you get the idea. A lot of this is unknown to many users until they get really into Facebook and often this can be too late. A good way to prevent a crisis before it starts is to spend some time with the the tab called Newsfeeds and Wall. (I skipped over the Search, but we’ll go back to it after this.)

When you get to the News Feed and Wall area your screen will look like this:

Now this is more cut and dry than the profile privacy area. This is because you’ve already set your preferences for who can see what about you. This is more fine tuning. This area is rather self explanetory so dive right in. I’ll wait here and when you’re done we’ll continue.

Okay. Welcome back. Go back to the main privacy area. You’ll notice right above the News Feed and Wall link there is a button for Search. This area will allow you to specify how much a person can see prior to becoming your friend.

In my opinion, I would let everyone find you. That makes Facebook a great way to reconnect with old friends and what not. Keep in mind that very stripped down Facebook page will appear in search results in Google and the other major search engines. But as you can see from mine, it’s not much.

So, in my opinion let everyone find you. It’s up to you to determine who is your friend.

Now the last MAJOR issue with privacy is controling how much a Facebook application can say about you to your friends and others. To edit this you’ll need to go to the settings area in the top menu and select Application settings.

Now in order for most applications to run, they need to have access to your information. Facebook does regulate what information they can actively keep on their own servers and they treat violations of their development rules strictly.

To edit a what an application says about you click edit settings. You’ll be greated with a popup options menu:

This dialog is worth investigating and tweaking. Essentially what you are controlling is how much information is posted when you interact with a particular application. Even with some control, still pick your applications wisely. Some are just ploys to get information out of you about your computer usage, where as others are lots of fun and worth checking out.

I hope this quick primer to the Facebook privacy panel was informative and helpful. Please feel free to share this post with your friends, just please attribute it back to this blog with a link.

I’d also link to hear your thoughts, post your comments below! Thanks!