It’s been almost a year since my Three Rules for Social Websites and many of my feelings are the same. I’ve found the ones that I really like are those that emulate real life. They make it easy to take my real world communication online.

That’s what I’ve liked about del.icio.us. Tagging something “for” a friend has replaced the emails with links I used to send out.

Recently LinkedIn added questions and answers. This allows me to ask questions and provide answers to not only my friends, but my friends-of-friends. This is networking with a purpose, and it’s emulating, and improving upon, real life.

I’ve also played with Facebook and found it a very pleasant tool. If this was around while I was in college, I think I’d have found it indispensable. It does a good job of emulating groups of friends and supplementing offline communication.

Social networks need to find innovative ways to emulate real life. The market for social sites that do something beyond connect people is virtually unlimited.

The world isn’t as big as we think it is. Our little corner may be excited about Thing A, but that does not mean everybody feels the same way, as much as it seems like it.

Eric Sink, from Baptists and Boundaries:

One of my favorite things about the web is all the individual communities that live there in the form of discussion boards. The web connects people in ways that were never possible before. When we find ourselves in a discussion forum with people from five different continents, that forum looks really big. But it’s still just five people.

The niches of niches are pretty interesting to me, but they can be dangerous. If you find yourself caught in this trap, it may be time to think bigger.

As I said in Everybody rarely means everybody:

Sometimes I read Webmaster forums, and I’m perplexed at how popular it is for participants to create their own Webmaster resources. Why? Because they see it as a lucrative business to be in because everybody cares about it like they do.

Read Eric’s entire piece and, unless you’re Baptist, check out the joke.

As I’ve thought about the different things simplicity can mean, I realized there’s a big difference between making something simple for me and making something simple for someone else. Worse yet, if we only focus on making life simple for ourselves, that’s when some of the most complex things for others are made.

Suckbusters has a story about Notepad’s confirmation box. I’m not sure if it’s as bad as the author says, but the point is that the programmers weren’t thinking like a user. They were making things easy on themselves.

It takes simplicity for most of us to be able to be productive, much like Tom’s simple answer about clearing his mind.

When I start a new project, I always need to trim it down to make sense of its simplest state. Once I have a rough draft version, I can add the obvious features first.

The trouble is knowing when it’s worth making my life a little more complex. Usually if I think in terms of how a feature should be, I realize it’s worth whatever technical hurdles there are to get there.

Joel Spolsky calls this bringing “the program model in line with the user model.” His book User Interface Design for Programmers is worth a read even if you aren’t a programmer.

There were some great definitions of simplicity that I thought I would share.

Tom:

Maybe it’s just because I finished up GTD, but for me simplicity is getting everything out of my mind so I can make right choices, well, simply.

Noah:

that is a great question about something so simple that we hardly think about it. maybe that is what simple means to me

“something you understand without instructions”

Jon:

Simplicity is one of those things that only ever pops into my head when it’s absent. It’s not something anyone achieves, but success is marked in how closely one comes to it–sort of like being a good person, or golfing a perfect game.

Great stuff guys. Thanks for sharing.

We all deal with information overload. Staying on top of email is my number one priority. It helps me remain in contact with colleagues, family, friends, and even strangers.

The solution that works for me is to keep my inbox clean. When new messages come in, I make a decision about them right away:

1. Answer right away, if it’s short
2. Delete it
3. Decide when I’ll act on it or reply

When I don’t reply immediately or delete the email, I drag it to a sub-folder of my “reply later” box. I have a folder for each weekday, one for the weekend, and another for the following week.

To plow through a lot of messages, either in my inbox in the morning, or in a daily box that has built up, I use the tips from The Empty Inbox.