I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. For me personally, its about which service can provide the features and functionality that I desire, and which service provides them to me in the most user friendly and manageable fashion.

I have personally found those services to be Twitter and Facebook, which is why I no longer use my MySpace, Bebo or Pownce accounts.

The other real issue here that I see then, however, is profile abandonment. But I guess that’s for another discussion!

You’ve outlined a great question that I’m not quite sure anyone has pinned down the answer to. I had a similar post last fall talking about social network fatigue and the time it took to keep all of these networks up-to-date (http://mikethoughts.com/2008/06/23/what-happens-when-everyone-stops-using-social-networks/).

I think the reason that people jump from one site to the other is because of the allure of something shiny and new. For some of the social networking sites it was about having more features (like uploading photos, etc.), but other times people are just signing up because it is the latest thing on the market (like microblogging startups).

I have registered for nearly every one of the microblogging sites that have emerged, but mostly just to test out their features and functionality. When it comes down to updating and participating in social media in an ongoing fashion, it’s nearly impossible (and definitely nonsensical) to update all of those sites with the same information. I’ve long been an advocate of finding the site which fits you the best and to stick with that.

I spent some time using Pownce and Plurk back in the day, but Twitter has emerged as my microblogging tool of choice. I could use a tool like Ping.fm to ping my status out to every network in existence, but if you aren’t there in each community to follow up on the discussions you are creating you’re just clogging up the internet.

The other interesting part of all this (especially in the microblogging arena) is that there have been services who have bit the dust since first starting, either slowly dying or being gobbled up by someone bigger. To me that’s just the nature of a competitive market. When things first start there are always going to be a lot of competitors, but in the end the strongest will survive.

As I said earlier, the best thing to do is to find the few apps or websites that provide you with the most value and that you enjoy using. Just like we tell companies wanting to engage in social media, don’t set up outposts everywhere imaginable. Only man those fronts where you can be an active participant.