I consume a large amount of online content. By “consume,” I mean actually reading things. My RSS clients — I use both Google Reader and a nifty, self-hosted program called Fever — are real rivals to the browser as my window on the web. They allow me to search and sort content far more efficiently than clicking from site to site, and fresh information is what powers my writing and thinking.

Naturally, I enjoy sharing what I find. To a fault, in fact, and there are plenty of great venues for this. The latest is Google Buzz, a promising new service which has generated an amazing amount of participation and discussion (some quite heated) since its introduction last week. Buzz can also be a huge time suck, and its convenient presence in Gmail — upon which I depend — hasn’t helped my writing output over the past few days.

It’s kind of like opening a bag of potato chips. Sure, you could eat just one and save the rest for later. But most of us don’t stop until we get to the crunchy bits at the bottom. That’s where I’m at with social media. It’s time to brush away the crumbs and go on a content sharing diet.

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