How I de-cluttered my Digital Life: Part 1

It would be hard to say that there are many people who don’t have a digital presence. The trails range from a brand new user (those using a computer for the first time) to those who have been there from the start and have managed to build up a vast and messy closet full of accounts over hundreds of sites.

My personal Clutter

Like my mother will tell you, I’m not the best person for maintaining order. My digital presence is no different, but I’ve decided it’s time to spring clean. Mine isn’t the most extreme list of accounts you’ll find, but as the amount of content I’m posting on the Internet grows, I’ve started reaching that threshold of necessity versus clutter.

…for the [sites] I use regularly – the lines are starting to blur on why I actually use them.

Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Hotmail, Flickr, Myspace, Youtube, MSN Messenger, Wordpress, Delicious, AOL, Threadless, Online Banking, LinkedIn, MediaTemple – the list goes on. Some of these are required (especially online banking and individual accounts on sites like Threadless can’t be avoided), some I rarely use anymore (unless you’re a band, Myspace is dead) but for the ones I use regularly – the lines are starting to blur on why I actually use them. Social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Gmail (the Google suite) evolve over time to gain things like Video support, status updates and more.

In order to work out where to first start cleaning the mess, I sorted my digital life into areas. Email, social networks and online content were the three main areas I found.

1. My social network is pretty well maintained as Facebook is my main tool for most contacts and I am already regularly cleaning this.
2. Email, on the other hand, needs a major overhaul. Up until 3 months ago I had 4 different email address’ you could’ve contacted me on (albeit one of them was my email at my day job) – with the two main conflicting accounts are Gmail and Hotmail, both doing exactly the same job.
3. Lastly, the online content I’m posting (photos, articles, updates) is starting to be published more regularly and with more thought put into them. Currently spread across Facebook (a personal network of peers) and my online portfolio/website (public network).

defining your audience

Any marketing person will tell you, in order to be successful with a product, you first need to define who will buy your product. My goals with publishing content (photography, writings) online is to increase viewing in the public network as the quantity and quality increases. More viewings mean more of the right people see your work, turning into potential work and therefore potential profit.

The line between personal and public is a bit hazy at the moment and thus by de-cluttering my Digital Life, it gives me the chance to clearly define which tools I use to target what audience. In the end, I want everything to loop back into Facebook as my personal network is about as informal as any network will get. A good guideline is to always publish in accordance with your most professional audience and any audience below that will not get offended (case in point: don’t publish stuff on Facebook that you don’t want your grandmother looking at).

Thankfully the ever opening platform that is Facebook will allow me to almost automatically feed everything back into Facebook for my Family and Friends to view and share (word-of-mouth is a free way to gain work) via the tools I use to publish content. This way I cover both my public audience and my private audience with the same published content.

However there will always be things that don’t fit into either box; Is that photo event of the family vacation good enough for everyone to see or should it remain for the private audience? Such questions will most likely be always answered with the latter, but building the management tools this way lets me choose as I go.

in part 2

I’ll look at taking on the overwhelming Email problem and discuss the next generation of communcation that is Facebook.