Certain animals (like magpies, raccoons, and pack rats) collect lots and lots of shiny objects to decorate their nests, attract mates, or because collecting them gives them some kind of rush. Primates (and that means you too, dear reader!) also love to collect stuff. My mom is the most fantastic pack-rat you’ll ever meet, as are several uncles and aunts–all of them lived through the Great Depression or grew up as “po’ folks” in the country.

I think the same thing is happening in the social media scene. We love those shiny new objects, right? Whether its checking out some new social bookmarking site, downloading an iPhone game with a social media component, blogging, or joining yet another social networking site, most of us who are out here have four-dimensional social graphs that are almost impossible to tease out. And only a handful of our friends, family, customers, and colleagues overlap from one  social media playground to any other. (And its not like we’re all hanging out at naughty swinger sites or something. It’s just that only a few of my Facebook friends are part of my LinkedIn network, and only a few of either are part of my Twitter scene.)

I’m not sure if all this activity is still healthy or not, or whether we’re just now in the realm of collecting shiny stuff just for the sake of collection; I fear that we are just feeding some kind of atavistic impulse to hoard in a time of want instead of actually using these tools as they were intended: to share information, connect with people, hang out, have fun.

The question is, as a consultant/freelancer, are you involved in the social media scene? If you’re not, you better get in the game, and do it in a way that will help you grow your business (if you like, we can have this discussion during SxSW). If you are involved in social media, what are you doing to give to the community? What are you taking from the community? Is there an imbalance there, on either side of the equation? Are you having fun? Are you doing things strategically?

Here’s a little nursery rhyme about magpies: