Can Sites Be Too Interconnected?

Plaxo and Plurk sync with Twitter and Facebook.

Friendfeed draws from most social sites and sends out to Twitter.

Facebook draws from Twitter, Friendfeed, StumbleUpon, Plurk, your blog, and any other site that has a Facebook app.

Ping sends your thoughts to any site you have registered with it.

And on and on.

There are many times when it’s nice that you don’t have to visit every single site every day in order to be active.

But if you’re not careful you can run into double post (or Arrrgh! even worse, triple post) issues. Like the time I forgot that long ago I had set up Plaxo to post to Twitter. AND I had set Plurk to post to Twitter. And then I decided to try Ping.fm, which posts to Plaxo, Plurk, AND Twitter.

Or yesterday, when I tweeted, and with the new Friendfeed settings, my tweet was sent back to twitter.

Of course, Friendfeed brings up even more issues.

Although there’s a core group of friends that is similar between many social sites, I still have a lot of unique friends on the sites I’m most active on. And if I find something I want to share with all of them, Friendfeed soon starts to look overrun, especially with the new real time posts.

It’s not just a problem with me, I’ve noticed many times people want to share something interesting on all the sites they’re on, whether they’re using Ping to post everywhere at once or posting to each site individually.

Let’s say for example, that I find an interesting article about social media. I stumble it, which is my first reaction with any interesting page I come across, then, if I think friends from different groups will enjoy it, I’ll post about it on Ping. I might also post it on a voting site, but the sharing problem isn’t as obvious there, so I’ll leave them alone for now.

Depending on my settings, when I stumble a page, Friendfeed and Facebook will both share it. With Friendfeed’s new settings on default, the stumble will also be announced over Twitter.

By sharing the site on Ping, I’m multiplying the number of times it will be shared on Friendfeed and through them, to Facebook and Twitter. Yes, I’ve tweaked my settings now, but how many people think to change from the default at first?

No real answers today, just thoughts and questions. What do you think, can sites be too interconnected? Was it better when Friendfeed grouped all similar posts together, or do you like seeing each individual site’s post show up in “real” time?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions!