The 3 P's of personal social publishing

I've been thinking about the roles of different social media tools.  Everyone has.  Steve Rubel and Jeremiah Owyang in particular.  You still get a few LinkedIn requests every week, but now you're also getting a few Facebook notifications and enough people are microblogging for you to at least bother with setting up a Twitter account.

So how does it all come together?  How should it all come together?  It's not like social media has created more hours in the day, so people are engaged for reasons that encompass multiple personal personas.  Here's a model of how I see my own participation, related to content in particular:

• Personal
• Professional
• Public

Overall, I believe that an individual's predisposition governs participation.  Like risk tolerance or the ability to eat spicy food.  There's a mode to which you default, but may prefer more/less beta or more/less wasabi in any given situation.

I think the frequency of social media channels lend themselves naturally to certain types of content.  Moreover, while persistence may be forever (i.e. archived), attention is fleeting.  Upon self-reflection, this is how I see my use of social media:

• Personal:  Microblogging (Twitter).  Highly perishable content, relevant to fleeting moments in time.  Reactions to events and the thoughts of others.  Social small talk, wide range of subjects.  Status updates work better on microblogs than on social networks.
  
• Professional:  Blogging (Typepad).  Considered content, longer shelf life.  Typically pulls different threads of information together.  Ideas worth revisiting at some point.  Focused, purposeful discussion on a limited range of subjects.  Four paragraphs of mental exhaust stream go best as a blog post, not 140 characters or a wall scribble.
  
• Public:  Social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn).  Identity; content close to static in nature.  Your birthday does not change.  Connections last longer than comments.  Focused on one persona of an individual in particular.  Some people only have one.  People become conflicted when developing a new persona, e.g. transition from university to first job.  Applications seem to fit best here.

The lines aren't solid, but they are relatively firm.  I know don't think too deeply about the model (actually not much at all); I just do it.  So why does it matter?  Understanding the nuances of platforms may open opportunites you might not have considered - e.g. maybe microblogging isn't a total waste of time after all.

Thoughts?

Comments

[Jeremiah Owyang]

I'm trying out many of the tools, which expands to audio, video. I then try them both in asynchronous and live.

The trick to being efficient (and paying yourself first) is to use these tools in an integrate way so they message can carry along all of them (or at least most of them)

As a result, I've learned to become efficient with my communications, by using these tools to communicate to all three of the groups you suggest, sometimes from the same tool.

I also cut out time-sink tools that require 1:1 communications like instant messaging and skype.

I really believe I'm more efficient in my overall communications, but if I need to have a real conversation I'll pick up the phone or talk face to face.

[Michael Sevilla]

Peter - isn't it crazy that you still have (at least) three different tools you need to manage? I'd much rather focus my attention on one mechanism vs. multiple.

Why not have an aggregator/publisher that allows you a one view/one publish platform? Sort of a communications agnostic interface that would allow you to Twit (or whatever the correct verb is), blog, or respond to Linkedin from a single platform. Jeremiah does bring up an excellent point about asynchronicity; that adds a whole new layer of complexity.

[Eric Kintz]

Peter- just posted a response to your post on my blog
Eric

[Peter Kim]

Thanks for the responses, guys. I love Jeremiah's concept of paying yourself first - familiar from some of the thoughts you've blogged about in the past. To your point about time sink tools, the only person I IM/text directly is my wife. Very efficient way to keep in touch - privately.

@Michael - I'd love to have a single tool! We'll look back on these days and laugh at ourselves for cobbling our communication together with the virtual equivalent of bubble gum and rubber bands. I feel like the applications are getting there, we just need something to help connect the dots. That includes better use of mobile (i.e. phone) and telematics (vehicles). And I'm not talking about a social network aggregator - it's more than that...