It is the hottest thing out there...but am I over it?

Hi, I'm Chris....and I am commitment-phobic.

I thought I was in this terrific relationship with facebook, but now that I have introduced it to all my family and friends I don't know if I can go on seeing it like I used to. After all, there is this hot number called twitter that is competing for my attention...and more and more I find myself taking the bait.

Don't get me wrong - I am not ending my facebook relationship. I can't. Facebook is like the electric company now - it is a utility - we have to have it if we want to be in the "real world" of business. There are more than 400 Million people using it now, including almost everyone I need to communicate with on a regular basis. I think I am just cutting back on how often we see each other.

So why the discontent? I think a lot of it has to do with just how much content streams through my news feed anymore. Yes, I know I can filter that down (and trust me, I do) but seeing my friends drone on about the flyers game or their kids isn't as as exciting as it used to be. Maybe I just need better friends...or maybe I need a medium where droning on is not encouraged.

Being honest, however, there is one more cause of my discontent - and it has to do with your fan pages. Yes, I am thrilled that you are all setting them up and working to brand yourself online, but if I am going to have to see all of your stuff in my news feed then please, please, please give me something more than your listings (apparently I am not the only one who feels this way). Fan pages are like newspapers - if the only thing you have in them is advertisements, eventually nobody wants to use them for anything other than bird cages.

So with all that in mind enter twitter - my new flame - sashaying in with all sorts of pizazz and hype. While I have had this fantastic 140-character microblogging tool for close to three years (actually if you include the ones for CBH I have close to 100 accounts) only recently has my tweet-stream picked up the sort of critical mass that makes it fun to read. Because I receive all sorts of fun (and useful) info there - real estate news, CNN, Phillies beat writers, tech geeks and just some plain ol' witty people - I get the kind of value I want from my social media, even if I do wish once in a while more of my local friends were on there. When I have a moment these days it is my tweet-stream I am reading on my phone, not my news feed.

So where do I go with all this relationship angst? Nowhere I guess. Facebook is my faithful old friend - twitter is my ever-present muse. Now that we have added the twitter icons & links to the intranet, I invite you to follow along.