I have found at a partial solution to my communication proliferation problem. The tool I’m employing, at least for the moment, is Digsby, a free client that combines cross-platform instant messaging with access to social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. This has replaced my usual IM client (Trillian, which I like a lot), but since I exchange very few IMs, that’s not an issue. However, the aggregated volume of communication still feels like it’s too much. I need robust filtering capabilities, and I have the feeling that I may need to write my own client (or hack an open-source client) in order to get that.