Online involvement has been on my mind recently, specifically the idea of a “unified online presence” to which you may be thinking “What?!” So let me explain, I’ve had the term in my brain for a bit so I figured I picked it up from this guy, or this guy – but a search reveals that there is not much out there really (side note: a search for “unified online identity” does have a result set that is branding based, but still not the definition I’m seeking).

Since I can’t find it, I’ll define “unified online presence” as the intentional effort to coordinate and connect accounts of an entity in such a way that they communicate a similar message (if not the exact same message) to strengthen involvement and identity in those communities.

I’ve believe that a unified online presence was the way to be involved online.  And from the reading I do, I believe a lot of people feel the same.  When I say a lot, I really mean a lot of the blogs I read, which are mostly about marketing with a tech emphasis – and as you know one of the tenets of marketing is focused messaging so that doesn’t surprise me.

A real world example of this messaging is having twitter tied to facebook so that what I say on Twitter makes it look like I’m saying it to facebook or tying my Flickr into facebook so my friends can see what I’ve posted there instead of on facebook.  It could also be as simple as using the same profile pic (aka avatar) for all the communities you’re part of online.  These actions allow us to seamlessly operate in multiple-communities and efficiently amplify our web persona which is great…right?

I’m starting to believe that a unified online presence is great for marketing, isn’t always great for using the tools to engage with each of the communities.  Fred Wilson posted recently (@fredwilson) on how he has changed his use of facebook and twitter, which sparked this post after I read it.

First he made this move:

So I decided to do something pretty radical. I deleted about 300 “friends” on Facebook yesterday and took my total friend count down to 56. I’ve limited my Facebook friends to family and close friends. My methodology is something akin to who I’d invite to a family wedding or bar/bat mitzvah. I realize that a lot of the 300 people I nuked were using Facebook to follow me and they can no longer do that.

And this is why:

My reasoning was as follows: I feel that between Twitter, this blog, and my tumblog at fredwilson.vc, there are plenty of public places on the web that you can follow me and all of them have RSS feeds for those who want the content pushed to them. I feel that Facebook is by default private and it’s become a good place for me to network with my close friends and family privately.

I see the value in this intentional use of the platforms.  The audiences are by nature a big venn diagram of those involved with twitter and those friends/family on facebook of which there is minimal crossover.  They are quite distance, Twitter is an open and searchable platform where my every word is sucked into Google and made public, while facebook on the other hand is closed and only open to those I’ve selected as friends.

Fred’s decisions actually remind me of a conversation I had in college.  I walked in my friend Tosh’s dorm room and he said something to the effect of “bro if you hadn’t IM’d me today I would have taken you off my buddy list” which was a bit of a shocker. (Now please keep in mind at my college everyone had tons of AIM buddies, because it was how we checked in with what our friends were watching, eating, feeling, and listening to without talking to them and a really easy way to round up people to play campus golf.)  So I asked Tosh, “why would you have removed me” and he said, “because I’m removing anyone that hasn’t IM’d me in the last 2 weeks.” Which blew me away at the time.  But now I see the strength in that path, he was essentially making the intentional choice to pare down his buddy list to those he actually communicated with.

This is not too far off from what Fred has done. He’s made a choice to separate who is in each community and how/what he communicates each one distinctly.  He’s chosen the path that each account is a separate community.  That path blows away the notion of a unified online presence, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t on the fence about what to do. While a unified viewpoint looks at all the various accounts as one big online community.  I think Fred has it right because they are distinct and separate but I think personal branding is important and should be done which leaves me with a conundrum.  I can see strengths and weakness of each path but I’m not to a decision point…. yet.

I know you guys have great ideas, so what about you?  What have you done? Would you change?

Pictures from Adiumx.com and Facebook.com