Riding the rapids of social software

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the pace at which social software is developing? I sure do.

Just this week Bryan Alexander started a little e-mail exchange by asking if anyone on his list had heard of coComment!. Of course I hadn’t so I headed over to check it out and proceeded to sign up. In the middle of that process I saw a post about Stickam in my RSS reader and checked it out. It looked cool so I asked Bryan if he had heard about it and he hadn’t. Such is the way of social software.

So now I have an account at flickr, del.icio.us, coComment!, google, Technorati, TagCloud, am subscribed to about 30 RSS feeds and get about 150+ e-mails a day. This is nothing compared with the volume of mail and text someone like Bryan has to deal with everyday. I described my state of being as riding down a class five rapids in a barrel.

So how do we deal with this onslaught of information? RSS was supposed to be a tool to help manage the flow but for me it has only increased it. Bryan said it seems like there is a “current of centralism” in Web 2.0 and pointed to D’Arcy Norman’s site and sxore. My experience is not unique and I am waiting for the killer app to organize and control the torrent. Until that time I will continue my bumpy ride in the constant beta flow that is social software.