Today, I received a direct message from a friend on Twitter complaining about receiving my status updates six times on Friend Feed. The problem, put simply, is that I use ping.fm to update my status on about a dozen different systems, Twitter, BrightKite, Plurk, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr, etc. Then, many of those systems get read by Friend Feed, so the same message shows up in Friend Feed half a dozen times, once from each of the different systems.

Another tool that I’ve been working with recently is Mento.info. Mento sends bookmarks to multiple places; del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, and straight to Friend Feed.

In addition, some of the systems feed each other. So, BrightKite currently feeds Twitter, Twitter feeds Jaiku. Then, there are all kinds of other connections. I use Twitterfeed to update Twitter when I update Orient Lodge. My updates to Orient Lodge also show up in Facebook and Jaiku. Ma.gnolia, which I mentioned above, also updates Orient Lodge.

Beyond this there is the connection between picture sharing sites. Blip.tv feeds Flickr and Orient Lodge. Flickr also feeds Orient Lodge and much of this ends up in Friend Feed as well.

Of course, if I send messages from my cell phone, particularly pictures or videos, I typically send them to multiple services. I haven’t even mentioned Utterz or Twitterfone.

It all becomes a fairly complicated mess, as illustrated by this graph. Not included in the graph is the way I use my cell phone, IMs, Utterz, Twitterfone or other services that I’ve probably forgotten.

Feeds, originally uploaded by Aldon.

Oh, and Friend Feed isn’t the only site other there aggregating data. The same thing happens in MyBlogLog, BrightKite, and probably several other sites that I’m forgetting.

To address this, and appease my friend, I’m starting to cut some of the links. I’ve changed my setting on BrightKite to not send updates to Twitter when I post a note.

I’ve also removed BrightKite Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr, and ma.gnolia from my Friend Feed. Since the vast majority of the information that they receive is coming from other sites, it will significantly cut down on the duplicated entries on Friend Feed without Friend Feed loosing a significant amount of content initiated on these sites.

Now, it would be really nice if Friend Feed and other sites that aggregate social information could check for duplications like this, so I could keep all the different sites more fully connected. Perhaps that will come in the future.