No More Social Networks, Please

Lost track of all the social networks you’ve signed up for? Join the club. [Or better yet, don't. If you've lost track, you're in too many clubs already.]

A handy tool called User Name Check scans over 60 social web platforms for your name and then reports which of them you’ve joined. If you are a social web profligate, this will likely surface some half-forgotten memories. Um, Magnolia? Oh, right. Tumblr? D’oh!.

I think the tool is designed to help you discover whether someone else who goes by your online handle is already signed up for, say, Virb [a Twitter clone, I think. It was down when I checked]. Presumably if the name TweakyCheeky is still available, you can claim your digital grubstake. If someone out there is already using it. . .well, forewarned is forearmed.

But truth told, the real value of User Name Check for me was to illustrate with breathtaking clarity just how many redundant, useless and profoundly inane social platforms have been unloosed in the past year or so.

Oh, I know, I know: The tools of digital collaboration have become so inexpensive and simple that anybody with a two-year-old Dell and a broadband connection can establish a hub where thousands of kindred spirits can be kindred together. The earth is shrinking, cultures are merging and the human fabric is warping and woofing with every new keystroke. All of this is disrupting established institutions and driving a massive social transformation whose outlines we are only beginning to see.

But man, the sh*t-to-shinola ratio of the social web has really spiked while I wasn’t looking.

Could Kwippy make any meaningful improvement to your life?

Could Koornk?

Rejaw?

Go ahead, try User Name Check. Hey, if your name is available on Diigo, sign up. It’s a free. . .global information ecology, or whatever.

But I will save you one bit of trouble. I took a quick look, and I think I can guarantee you’d rather play the “disappearing pencil” game with the Joker than join the social network called iliketotallyloveit.

Once again, a tip o’ the fez to Very Short List, the daily e-mail newsletter which surfaces so much good stuff it’s getting embarrassing for the rest of us.