“Computers excel at creating problems that take computers to solve.”*

That quote pretty much sums up the tendency of social media -- and really, any networked-based technology -- to expand like a supernova. For example, in the relatively short nine-year history of the social-networking galaxy, Friendster expanded into Myspace, which sparked Facebook, which ignited Google’s orkut.

And look at the social media supernova triggered by Twitter, crowd sourced content and bloggers.

One social networking technology creates a spin-off that creates yet another spin-off.

This proliferation of platforms is an instance of the well known “Network Effect” -- the tendency of a network to increase its value by expansion.

The Anti-Social Network Effect
The Network Effect was originally used to describe telephone networks. But when it comes to a social network, it’s evident that a Negative Network Effect (also known as Inverse Network Effect or Reverse Network Effect) takes place.

Call it the Anti-Social Network Effect. That’s when your Facebook friends or your Twitter followers have expanded to the point that you stop paying attention to them.
 
When too many people are clamoring to get inside your cranium, you start filtering and tuning out. You may still use the technology, but the personal value disappears.

When social media goes supernova, it becomes difficult to navigate the social-networking space.

Social Media Management -- A Black Hole?
It’s easy to get lost in social media space. But that’s no reason to give up.

Remember: “Computers excel at creating problems that take computers to solve.”

In the face of the social media boom, other technologies have been invented to take care of the problem of managing the multiplying number of social media users and platforms. Welcome to the "social media dashboard."

Exploring Social Media Space from a Comfortable Monitoring Cockpit
A social media dashboard helps you navigate multiple social networks that are next to impossible to monitor manually. As an ironic example, let’s look at a product recently released by Cisco, the friendly folks who brought us networking in the first place.

Their social networking cockpit is called "SocialMiner." It's designed to help companies scan "what customers and prospects are saying about their brand, and communicate with them to help resolve problems or answer questions."

How does it work? SocialMiner can capture a "tweet" or words from a forum or blog that are programmed into the tool as part of a multiple keywords search campaign. When SocialMiner scans that word or phrase, it alerts the company's customer service personnel to respond to that customer's concerns.

In the case cited by Cisco, the tool helps figure out what to say to the target audience and to identify “the point at which an interaction should be escalated from standard reply to a conversation with an expert."

Using the tool provides a positive feedback loop that increased the company's total site visitors by 200% and Facebook fans by 13%.

Social Media Monitoring Tools are Going Exponential
It’s no surprise that social media monitoring tools and services (also known as “sentiment measuring services”) are expanding -- exponentially, of course. The underlying technology is often a spinoff of existing search engine optimization (SEO), customer relationship (CRM) or customer intelligence (CI) tools.

Some are fee-based, like Cision, Scoutlabs (now Lithium), Radian6 and Sentiment Metrics.

Others are free or tiered-price, like Google Alerts, HootSuite,  Social Mention, Boardtracker and Icerocket.

That’s just a few of hundreds trying to manage the anti-social network effect caused by social networking.

Mind numbing? Sure.

But when you start feeling overwhelmed, just grab your Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy towel and recite the mantra: “Computers excel at creating problems that take computers to solve.”

* I wish I could take credit for this line. But I believe it was originally used by either John Dvorak or Jerry Pournelle. I’ve just lost track.