One series that I wanted to watch last year – but never found the time – was Kings. It isn’t coming back this year. Hulu mentioned that the entire series was being taken offline on September 20. It didn’t take much poking around to discover why. DVD sales start September 29.

That left me with a question. I’d only seen a handful of episodes. Do I try to watch the whole series on Hulu in its last days in that incarnation? Or wait for the DVD release? Or skip the show as something I wanted to do but never had enough time?

Perusing Wikipedia’s plot summary of the series made it easier for me to make my decision. A familiar tale, retold. Just like another retelling that I stumbled across but never was able to finish. I’ll get to Kings on DVD after I finish reading the blog version.

I think social networking is a wonderful and entertaining tool to get in closer contact with people. I’ve personally learned about so many people who now have children, homes, and spouses that I wouldn’t have known about before – people who I had lost touch with years ago. I’m really happy for them, and it’s great to get that chance to catch up with people who had inadvertently fallen from my list of colleagues.

Just as I can get more done with a word processor than hand writing everything, I expect programs can help me know a bit more about a larger number of people. But I don’t think I’ll truly know hundreds of people – I think I’ll have trivia about most of their lives.

The larger point behind that entry is that social networking is an interest for some people in the same way that I have a passionate interest in genealogy. Some folks will be really connected and plugged in to the newest sites. They’ll move on when too many other people join the site and it loses its hipness. And if they’re not coming back, were they truly engaged with – and listening to – your message? Or were you just playing in the right medium for a few months?

It’s a question for a communications professional who believes social networking is The Solution. It might only be one tool to get one segment of people. It’s a service – not a strategy.

This isn’t something that I want to say too loudly. A large component of my job entails going on social networking sites and blogging platforms to update information and exchange messages with people. Almost impossible not to have some version of a social networking strategy today.

I remember geocities, tripod, and angelfire. When’s the last time you visited one of those sites? (Millennials: Do you even know what they are?)

Somebody new started following me on Twitter yesterday. I took a few moments today to check out the guy to see whether I wanted to follow him. As I write this, he’s following 47,947 people. He has 48,302 followers. Made it easy to decide. I’m not following him. Nothing important will come from him. And he doesn’t really care what his nearly 48,000 people are saying to him. He’s in a room full of people and nobody’s listening.

LinkedIn had to limit connections to 30,000 users earlier this year. Which, obviously, cramped the style of the people who really actually network with 30,001 people.

Count me as a skeptic of the more is better idea. I think meaningful online conversations and relationships have a limit. At some point, information overload is simply human nature.

50,000 followers is nothing if they aren’t listening. And if they aren’t listening, they’re able to walk away from the network – and your messages.

I’m approaching a period at work where we’ll be able to tear apart and remake what we’re doing online with our social network programs. And as I’m scratching out my thoughts before the planning sessions, I’m thinking about being effective – about the difference between being busy and being productive. I want the people who friend and follow us to think about us.

There’s a lot of clutter out there. Until we get past the more-is-better phase and look-how-important-I-am mentality, social networking will remain a fad rather than part of the answer.

Thanks to M. Keefe on Flickr for the photo.

The Digital TV switchover has been sitting out there for years now. A year ago, television stations went frantic in trying to convince millions of Americans to race out for special receivers and converter boxes to avoid a blank television on February 17. A few weeks ago, Congress and the President even changed the law to delay the mandated shut-off date for broadcasting on analog. The stations in my market went ahead with the switchover today anyways. I doubt many noticed.

More than half of Americans have cable and aren’t affected. And even more have bought a television recently enough to catch the digital signals without a special piece of equipment. How many Americans might be affected? 14 percent. If they all have really old TVs. Leave No Television View Behind. (They might start reading.)

Lots of fear, because without urgency I might miss my third-rate newscast. DTV-2K. Hype overblown.

We missed a great chance to stimulate the economy today because of months and months (and months) of breathless DTV hype. We should have had broadcasting television stations make the change without any announcements. Then we might have had hundreds of thousands of Americans scrambling for new televisions today and placing calls to repairmen. The result would have been a huge spending spree and millions of dollars of retail purchases. Could have started an economic turnaround if somebody would have thought it out. Instead, those millions of purchases were spread out over 12 months – diluting their impact and leaving us to wait for small tax refunds, rebates, and reductions.

Maybe some people are closer than others. The hair’s a little off. But look at this pair.