I would rather see a simple About Us with some info about the company, a bit of history, names of contacts and the standard address book stuff than a huge page of poorly maintained social site links.

Sure, if you twitter or have a well fleshed out page at some social site, put it on the about page. But be sure you first have the info people need before go nuts on stuff they dont need.

A sharp Occam’s razor always wins…

I’d agree with Winderbear.

My own feeling is there will be a web 2.0 backlash fairly soon.
Studies show that due to our evolutionary past and the way tribes were stuctured, our brains can only cope with 50-60 people in our immediate circle. Outside of this, people get objectified. This is why people yell at each other when in cars. The other person is a mere object in there way, over someone that they can feel empathy with and show respect towards.

I’m afraid that the more people start to pop up on the net that are not all that important to your daily life, the more negative feels you will have towards there interruption. I’m already feeling this with those comments that appear on the time line on some video players.

I’m always surprised at the lack of flexibility in thinking of ‘designers’ - so, yes, there are definitely concerns with approaching this - esp when you move into cluttered territory, outdated content, etc. - but what ~could~ you do with this?

What could this do to improve the user experience?
Light a frickin’ candle on occasion, kiddies.

I see this as fertile territory for developers who want to build aggregation tools. Meta data about meta data can help a lot. Tools for updating multiple points of presence are also an exciting area. As data interchange standards begin to emerge for profiles and prefs on these services, the tools should be easier to develop.

I would even pay some money today for a commercially supported Macintosh app that allowed me to update dozens of sites in one fail swoop. I do that with MarsEdit today on my various blogs and I had no problem paying them some cash a couple of years ago.

As some of these early movers in the social space begin to die off or get bought (plaxo and comcast anyone?) or consolidate the cream kinda rises for a while and pretty soon the milk below isn’t worth keeping.

I agree with Robert that today you should include some info about the best of your social sites on your “about page”. But as for me and my company we are going to move slowly into these waters and only highlight the stuff that we are committed to keeping up to date.

In the olden days (mid 90’s) a brochure web site with an “under construction” banner that was a year old or so may have done more damage than good. Today its just plain silly.

In the same way, sending your customers off to a social site that you don’t commit the time to maintain or one that is in the process of dying is kinda dumb.

You might be interested in Get Satisfaction, a site that helps companies combine contact, customer service, and the conversations therein. For example:
http://getsatisfaction.com/rosenfeldmedia

Winterbear: Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that companies strip out the essential information! They should definitely retain whatever company info is relevant. I’m suggesting they add info on their social networks, to let their customers know where they can engage with the company.

Mike: It’s entirely possible you’re right, but a Web 2.0 backlash wouldn’t nullify the innate human need and desire to connect in social ways. That existed long before Web 2.0, and will continue long after. And now that it’s become easy to finally talk back to companies (after a long history of one-sidedness), it’s unlikely people will relinquish their ability (their right!) to do so. Web 2.0 gave us a way to do it, but when Web 2.0 is played out, we’ll still want what Web 2.0 gave us.

Great points, one and all. Thanks for the conversation!

Amusingly, I read this just after we added links to our relevant online presences to our about page.