Irony and Transaction Costs.

The other day I came across a person on Facebook who is a member of two different groups that promote simple living.  Straightforward enough.  I've seen the magazines and I sympathize, to a point.

But the irony wasn't lost on me.  To cut back on material things in life, to live intentionally, to forsake baubles and distractions and yet, obviously to join not one, but two of these groups appeared a little over the top.  Through casual observation, it became clear that many people invest a great deal of time into these online communities and groups.  Simple it was not.

At about the same time, a great discussion on Scobleizer's FriendFeed featured the challenges of the latest, greatest social media aggregation tools.  How do you get all the conversations, all the posts, reviews, comments and other digital flotsam into a single platform or to publish across platforms?  To deny this need to be swallowed by the greatest transaction cost of all.  We each face a scarcity of time and energy.  

I post to Twitter, it goes to my Facebook status, onto FriendFeed and into the sidebar of Radical Immersion.  Without the aggregator of RSS, the cost of reposting the same thought would be prohibitive.  Even simple posts remain "mental notes" throughout most days because of the urgency presented by other activities.

With all of these time saving technologies it is still hard to post more than once or twice a day.  I wonder about these people with thousands of followers.  Do they have day jobs?  Do they talk to their families?  Or, are the families online?

Rubel on FriendFeed.

Steve Rubel has a reputation for being something of the ur-blogger on public affairs work. Today he lauds the potential for FriendFeed. He is big enough, and good enough, to both note and set trends.

One thing about this post caught my eye. In response to a comment to the blogpost, Rubel writes:

"I remember when Ev showed me Twitter in a cab in Seattle in December 06. I thought it was going nowhere and, boy was I wrong. But now FF is basically innovating faster and changing the game."

The rate of innovation is a hard metric to capture, but imperative to instill in corporate DNA.

So What is the Point?

What's the point here? Cut to the chase. Hey Kent, don't you know blogs are supposed to be punchy and get right to it?

I get technology. I use some social media tools. I'm acutely aware of how organizations communicate to shape outward circumstances to improve their standing -- or potential. What I hope to learn is the nitty gritty details and nuances of how the sum of a comprehensive social media presence can be greater than its individual parts.

To that end, one tool that I use to keep up with the flow is FriendFeed. It aggregates all of the RSS and other feeds of a given person so I can follow that person's activity in one place. I know that the service is widespread. It is used and not in the backwaters of the Internet. Yet, I don't know the strategies of how people build useful friend lists. Why is it that after a couple months on FriendFeed there are 9 people I am following but many multiples of that on Twitter or Facebook?

How are you using aggregators in your work life? Are you following Radical Immersion on FriendFeed? If not, why not? Comments open.