the trouble with social networking

The trouble with social networking is that there are so many platforms and none of them talk to each other.

Sure, I don’t really want professional colleagues to contact me through Facebook or another more casual social networking site. But I also don’t want to have to join every new networking site just to reconnect with one person…like I had to do today by joining LinkedIn to track down an old boss whose number got lost when my phone died and who recently left his last job (so I don’t have his email address).

I want to grab some lunch with him when I am back in the old hometown because he is a good guy and a little networking never hurt anyone.

But now that I have joined LinkedIn, I feel like I have to have more than one connection. Otherwise I look like I am a weird stalker.

So, as with every other social network I join, I will spend the next week or two getting my profile to a level of respectability before getting frustrated by it all and letting it go to the weeds.

There has to be a better way.