Must. Be. AWESOME!!!

I just discovered this AWESOME new tool for identity management: HootSuite. For social media users with multiple lifestreams, it is essential to your well-being.

You can tie your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Ping.fm accounts into the tool and manage then using a variety of options. They just developed Twitter List support, which provides even more functionality. This would be an ideal tool for social media powerhouses who manage multiple Twitter identities. I’ve even set up a number of Twitter searches for specific hashtags and subjects that update continuously.

There’s even an RSS reader from which you can pull in multiple feeds and organize according to your preferences. I haven’t monkeyed around with that one yet, and it looks cool, but I’m a diehard Google Reader user.

Also cool: a built-in URL shortener, an iPhone app (as yet untried), and built-in analytics tools with which one can use to measure each Twitter user, hash or other stream they’ve integrated into the tool.

Also AWESOME: there’s a bookmarklet (the “Hootlet”) that you can embed on your toolbar. As you browse, you can punch that thing and it launches a separate browser box that takes you instantly to a status update poster. You can choose your social media network here and choose to post a link to the page or media file you’re currently browsing or something completely unrelated. GREAT functionality for the power browser.

I’ve been hesitant to adopt a third-party tool to manage my Twitter account primarily because the best of them are desktop downloads (Seesmic, TweetDeck). The great thing about HootSuite is that it’s all web-based. I can’t even tell you how handy it is to have one dashboard from which to manage my outgoing posts/tweets/updates. No more bullshit getting caught between my Twitter audiences and my (profanity-fearing) family networks on Facebook. HootSuite will be even more functional to me once they integrate other social networks I use like Goodreads (hint, hint).

Check it out, social media mofos. I think you’ll like it.

I had an interesting exchange on Facebook the other day about the esoteria of my perspective on being AWESOME, on striving to be more AWESOME, and the like. He brings up some good concerns about this mythical goal where everyone is giving their best effort every time, where there is no mediocrity, where crapulousness is gone. In this state, with everyone being AWESOME all the time, does that become the new standard? Thus defeating the purpose of AWESOME in the first place?

I had to think on this for a while, but my initial reaction I believe is correct: as a collective equilibrium is attained, it must further evolve. So once everyone becomes AWESOME, the “standard” for defining AWESOME must be raised.

In this continuum, is it ever possible to reach a perpetual state of AWESOME?

I’m not sure. I think the way we look at this continuum is important, however. If we consider this quest for AWESOME purely a linear path toward achieving a goal (despite how impossible and/or subjective this particular goal may be), then I think we lost focus on what’s most important: the drive involved that motivates us to be AWESOME. I think it is this drive – or in more cliched terms, the “journey being more important than the destination” – that bears more attention.

The galvanization of oneself to achieve that which is truly AWESOME… well, that’s a tough thing to qualify or quantify. And I suspect it’s different for everyone.

So get achieving, people. Time’s a-wastin’.

{Image H/T Seth @ Dark Zero.}