At the risk of being contrary, I sort of disagree. If you're planning on posting your status to a bunch of services, ping.fm is handy. It's a timesaver. I guess some people go overboard and abuse it, but I myself just used it to start 2 great concurrent conversations on both identica and twitter. And then my web 1.0 friend emailed me b/c he noticed my new status on linked in and wanted to know what's up. And since Twitter links to facebook, I can share with my mainstream friends too. I know you mean your post as a warning to those who don't really participate (spammers), but cross-posting in and of itself is not evil or wrong. IMHO, that is. :) - Sarah Perez

You're absolutely correct, Sarah. I use Ping.fm a LOT. I wrote a whole post detailing my elaborate scheme for it :), but some people are just abusing it with no remorse. They believe it's ok. And I will tell you, these are not just spammers, they are just making themselves look like spammers. It's ridiculous. - Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF

Yes, your scheme makes a lot of sense. But you know what? I've never quite figured out the deal with Twitter (or any micro-blogging service's) spammers. I mean, if you feel someone is abusing ping.fm or whatever, you can just unsubscribe/unfriend them, you know? I like to tweet my blog entries, for example. Now, some people may feel that's spam, but I don't because I actually like it when other people tweet theirs too! - Sarah Perez

Since my RSS reader is pretty full, when my friends tweet they post something, I'm glad for the update and I go check it out. If it's spammy of me (and them) to do that, I would rather that those that think so just unsubscribe from me than ask me to change my behavior. For me, I like Twitter as a blog post alert system :) (I know I'm going a bit off topic of your original post, but that's just something I had to get off my chest) :) - Sarah Perez

Nothing wrong with that. I just think it gets ridiculous when you are having a back-and-forth convo with someone on Twitter, but you're using Ping.fm to send your @replies...so they are flying across the micro-blogosphere and everyone else is wondering A) WTF you're talking about and B) Why you're not responding when they try to join in the convo :). Even if it's regular status updates, what's the point if you are not monitoring replies across the board. - Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF

I agree with you there - ping.fm for @replies is not right :) - Sarah Perez