Carolyn Crist

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the social media options out there, and I’m just now taking the time to discover some of them.

Klout.com: The Klout score (1 to 100) measures influence based on your ability to drive action online. The Klout score uses data from social networks in order to measure:

My Klout score for Navigating Newsrooms Twitter (paired with my Facebook account) is 44, which isn’t bad. That’s labeled as a “networker.” I haven’t checked all of the levels yet, but I’ve moved up from conversationalist to socializer to networker, which is cool. The Vicariously Jane Twitter itself pulls in a score of 39, which is also a “networker” label. I signed up last week and am just now discovering how intense people are about their Klout scores. Crazy!

GetGlue.com: You check-in to entertainment with GetGlue – movies, music, TV, authors, whatever. You can connect with Facebook, and apparently I have 11 friends who currently use it. I’m not sure if I want to get sucked in or if it’s worth my time. You can unlock stickers and discounts, so maybe there’s a benefit.

Storify.com: By tracking tweets, Storify can essentially put together a story about a given topic. It’s gained a big following from journalists and was created by a journalist. It’s pretty nifty. Check out the Storify tracking for Live from Cupertino: @dsarno tweets Apple’s announcement.

Speaking of, who else really wants an iPhone 4S now? I know I do. I was looking at the iPhone 4 this weekend, but I think I’ll wait now …

Etsy.com: Simply, you can sign up and sell your craft items here. The social media aspects include creating communities with other crafters and finding your favorite artists to visit again and again. I just signed up to sell Pearl Pendants, so we’ll see how that goes. I need to load the items!

Scribd.com: This is the world’s largest social reading and publishing company. You create an account and then share entertaining, informative and original written content across the web. I just remembered today that I have an account, and I’m interested to see what my Facebook friends have been reading …

TwistedSifter.com: Just discovered this one today. It has three goals:

1. Provide content that is interesting, creative, or funny
2. Use BIG pictures whenever possible
3. Keep our readers up-to-date with what’s popular online

Craftgawker.com is like etsy but has a fun and user-friendly way of displaying user-submitted photo galleries. I want to start one so I can post this on my blog!

Craftgawker is teamed up with WeddingGawker.com, DwellingGawker.com and FoodGawker.com. I want to find fun things on all of them!

Do you have more? I want them!

I sign up for all of them, and then I drown in postings and trying to maintain each … and I find tons of interesting pages that I want to read. I’ve e-mailed myself so many links that I want to read later (a.k.a. after work) that it’s no longer effective. I’ve sent too many e-mails to myself with about 10 links per e-mail.

For instance, check out the TwistedSifter post on 15 Beautiful Libraries Around the World.

They’re pretty awesome, but I only took a second to glance at them before moving on to my next tab. Speaking of, I always tend to have way too many tabs open as well.

So what do you do? Do you have an effective pinboard site? Do you manage your tabs in an interesting way? Or do you ignore most of these sites and posts? How do you stay info or social media savvy?

Then there’s the question of pushing out your own thoughts. I created this blog for my own amusement, but I’m definitely trying to make something out of the Navigating Newsrooms, Vicariously Jane Austen and Pearl Pendants ideas. NN and VJA have decent followings on Twitter, but how do you pull people to your website? I can get some good mentions and RTs going, but I’m not sure many people are actually joining my sites as members.

I read an interesting article on Inside Facebook today that talked about how third-party applications such as Twitter, Tweet Deck and HootSuite can actually decrease Facebook feedback because of the way the Facebook filters operate. I guess I’ll start posting manual updates instead of through Twitter. Do you find a difference between the number of “likes” and comments on Facebook with manual versus auto input?

Tell me!