Social Network Niche Sharing

After reading Kurt Starne's article on Going Native In The Age Of Aggregation, I knew there were people like I who are tired of jumping hoops, making social network services connect with each other, and seeing duplicates in the same sites. I used to do a one click sharing to the SNS world, but doing that just made my sites feel like soup with too much water in it.

In response, I'm thinking of approaching these sites like how I would write for blogs: niche sharing. Niche sites cater to a community that has particular needs and interests (example, MMORPG.com is for MMO gamers, TechCrunch is for techies and gadget lovers, etc.). Looking at my main SNS (Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook, and Plurk), I see a trend in my audience's interests and shares that will be the basis of what I'm going to share with them.

• Twitter: most of the people I interact here are mostly social media experts, techies and international MMO players/publishers
• Identi.ca: Ubuntu/Linux experts and techies reside in this one
• Facebook: Friends, ex-classmates/officemates who like seeing wacky & interesting stuff and local MMO players/publishers
• Plurk: Friends, local MMO players/publishers, and acquaintances

From the list above, I can see that both my Facebook and Plurk audiences will be able to appreciate the same things, while my Twitter and Identi.ca followers will have to be sent specialized posts and shares. Here's what I'll be doing:

1. Disconnect all social networks with each other. Nothing like a clean slate.
2. Unfollow the same people in different SNS. For example, I follow Louis Gray in both Facebook and Twitter. I will need to decide in which medium I'll follow him in depending on where he's most active. This will take a long time...
3. Create a "Post by group" process in Ping.fm for Facebook/Plurk and Twitter/Identica. This one will be easy.

There will be stuff I will post to all SNS, like my blogposts for instance.

Some might be asking where Google Buzz will be in this picture. As for now, I'm really not sure as I'm not sure what my followers in that one really like. Most of them are just random people I know nothing about and they have almost nothing in their Buzz at all. I see a very big potential here and will continue to put my Google Reader Shares in it for now.

I'll be experimenting this process for the next 3 months and will see if there's an increase of activity or none at all.

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