Stowe Boyd reports that he has reduced the number of social networking sites he belongs to. It’s more difficult than it sounds to shut down your membership on social networking sites, particularly if your e-mail address has changed and you don’t have your password handy.
I am keeping involved in Last.fm, Flickr, and Plazes. And I will
continue to investigate new sites, like Yahoo 360, as they come online:
but in the future, I will opt out of them immediately, as part of my
testing of their capabilities. It’s like writing a good partnership
agreement: be sure to structure any exit from the partnership up front,
so no one is confused later on, if and when a breakup takes place.
Keeping track of user names, passwords and other account information is a pain. I don’t blame anyone who decides to simplify their life by reducing the number of online accounts they have.
However, don’t get too dependent on one tool.
After several months of
inactivity, some Yahoo! users have reported their accounts being closed. No doubt
the automatic close-out of inactive accounts was an attempt to keep
people visiting regularly, but it doesn’t take into consideration the
many valid reasons why someone might not use their Yahoo! account for
four months, even though they plan on using it in the future.
I don’t think any of these online services guarantee that they will
exist in the future, so no one should depend on them as their sole
location for critical information. If your favourite online tool
stopped working tomorrow, what’s your back-up plan?