Okay well I hope it’s going to be great, but still I’m finding that using Social Media is a great way to organize people and share ideas and items. Myself and two other Social Media junkies, Neal Wiser and Phil Baumann are tossing around the idea to start a podcast for a small side project we’re doing together. This is still very much in the planning stages, because we only decided to do something last night. What struck me and gave me inspiration to write this post is how I’m using Social Media and cloud computing to get things off the ground (sorry for the pun).

There are a few tools that I’m using that hit a chord with me this morning.

First off Twitter. This is the main avenue of communication between the 3 of us (that and Skype too). Direct messages are a life saver and much easier than writing short emails to each other. I’m currently using Seesmic Desktop which really keeps my Tweeting in order and helps me organize this project and my life in general.

Second, I’m using a service called Dropbox to host files that we want to share amongst the three of us. This allowed me this morning to share an mp3 of a preliminary intro to the podcast with the other two members. Very neat.

Third, Google Docs. Google is a great resource, especially their Google Docs application. It allows us to collaborate in real time. A must for getting a project together.

Fourth, Delicious. Delicious is a social bookmarking cloud program/site that allows you to easily bookmark stories and sites that you want to go back to later and even share. This will be indispensable for sharing links to the stories we talk about in the show.

Fifth, Evernote. This is my brain online. Any Web page or online article I want to read or keep and read later goes in here. I couldn’t live without it.

Sixth, Facebook. This Social Media platform allows for Pages, we have an A2SM page (not too impressive yet) that will allow us to build a community around the blog and podcast. Very helpful and neat.

These are just a few of the items in the Social Media universe that I’m using to start this project. Do you use any of them? I’d like to hear what you have to say. Post your thoughts in the comments below.

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.