I was just discussing this with a friend over dinner last night. We agreed that managing more than 3 social networks just isn't worth the effort when it comes to marketing especially. No matter what niche network comes out you know everyone is already on either Facebook or Twitter so following the others is largely a waste of energy. It's one thing to keep up with the others casually but giving them equal attention as the majors is pretty fruitless these days. That's what we agreed on after working for years in social media for big companies.
My friend actually has a boss that insists she be posting for the company account on every little network around. That includes Meebo, FriendFeed, Plaxo, even MySpace and others. It's pretty nuts and it doesn't really help. Once you've hit Facebook and Twitter (and LinkedIn to a lesser extent) you already reached 90+% of your social networking audience.
My friend actually has a boss that insists she be posting for the company account on every little network around. That includes Meebo, FriendFeed, Plaxo, even MySpace and others. It's pretty nuts and it doesn't really help. Once you've hit Facebook and Twitter (and LinkedIn to a lesser extent) you already reached 90+% of your social networking audience.