Is an overloaded email inbox any worse than an overloaded social media stream?

October 9, 2008 by Doug Mitchell

Sometimes I wonder if the concept of moving “away from the email inbox” as a organizational and informational repository is a good idea. What happens when we really shift gears towards a larger social media stream to execute our communications and community building?

In many cases, we build a very large and bloated social media infrastructure that resides in many different places. Each place requires updating and servicing. Like many of you out there, I have blogs on Typepad…and Wordpress now. I am subscribed to about 235 RSS feeds and leverage CentralDesktop to manage projects, store documents, and keep track of tasks/milestones for specific projects. The list goes on.

I use ONE email program to manage the email stream. I use about 15 different social media applications/services to manage the social media torrent.

I’m not complaining and we are out there daily coaching clients and potential clients to take advantage of what social media has to offer. But we advise being careful and selective about what one takes on in the socialmediasphere because it can lead to overload well beyond “Maxed out inbox syndrome.”