Social Media Burnout
July 3, 2008 by Roland Reinhart
I like to dabble. But I am getting soooo burned out on all the microblogging and social connection tools.
I’ve created a score of accounts on various sites, under various personalities depending on what I was experimenting with. Here’s just a small portion of my tale:
First Jaiku was great. It aggregated all my feeds into a single stream, but I couldn’t find my “friends” there.
Then I was enthralled by the speed of Twitter, only to be lured away by the fancy features of Pownce.
I became bored and bounced back and forth making “friends” and interacting on Pownce and Twitter until I learned to setup Twitterfeed — then I only had to post on Pownce and my posts would automatically make their way onto Twitter as well.
To combat distraction from refreshing the browsers constantly, I trialed a variety of desktop client apps to alert me with chirps and notifications as the timeline became updated throughout the day.
But I got lazy. Twitter had a mobile client so I went back there so I could read the timeline in the bathroom or in the parking lot. Eventually Pownce became mobile friendly too, but it was too late for me.
I don’t bother with updating my status in AIM, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo, etc. Then came a slew of sites I can barely remember. I skipped over FriendFindr, FindFriendr, FriendMeUpOrIllKickUrButt, blah, blah, blah and moved with the herd over to Plurk. Not satisfied, I found the beta code (pingofpings or pingyoulater) for Ping.fm so now I can post from a single interface to a dozen other sites. I can even email from my mobile phone to my unique Plurk address and get posted all over. Very cool.
The hole I’ve dug myself into is two-fold:
- I no longer want to add to the noise and clutter. I’m trying to post mainly useful commentary and links to resources.
- Now how do I interact with all my social network “friends” scattered all across those sites?
Last night, the gang at the New Media in New Jersey meetup were playing with identi.ca. (*sigh*)
So, what’s your story? Are you a microblogging or social junkie? Or do you think it’s all time-wasting rubbish. Please share your thoughts with us.
Oh, and wont you add me as a friend?
No related posts.
I’ve struggled with this, as we’ve talked about before “off-air”, Roland. I’ve been on Facebook and then pulled my account off there, because I was getting too many invitations to “Compare” myself to other people.
I’ve signed up for Twitter, Linked-In and Biznik, but I find spending time on there does absolutely nothing to drive business my way. As far as friends are concerned, I’ve made them via blogging alone. And I value blogging because it seems to develop community more organically than other tools.
When I left Facebook, I sent around a mass message to say “I’ve enjoyed meeting you all or reconnecting. I need to focus on XYZ and I’m finding it better to use more traditional tools to stay friendly with people.”
Interestly, I got no responses…
Roland, buddy, I hear ya.
This Interweb thingy is supposed to make communication easier, not tie us down so that the variety of communities we’ve connected with become a burden to communicate to!
I twit because I find it convenient. There are drawbacks, and I am tempted to Plurk, but I shudder at the amount of time I would lose in my day if I had to keep another place up to date with my mundane thoughts and sarcastic comments. I really add nothing to society, and I don’t want to weigh down these networks with my useless bytes. LinkedIn is somewhat necessary at the moment due to my current employment status, although that’s nearly fixed, I think.
Facebook is one that puzzles me – I resisted for a long time, simply because everyone else kept telling me how cool it was. Now that I’m in (235 friends and counting), I’m only really using it for the selfish reason of reconnecting with lost friends. I don’t want to join your vampire fight, I don’t want to become a fan of that band, I don’t want to play Scrabulous with you, I don’t want you to own me or pwn me or anything – stop sending me those stupid invites!!! The FBchat tool is cool, and if your company doesn’t block it (first thing I do!) it can allow for some time spent avoiding work under the guise of work. That’s about it at the moment. Facebook and MySpace have their moments – but I think you really have to be aged 25 or less to appreciate them (and even want to delve into the depths of them).
…I’m just so tired now. I must go lie down, but before I do, I have to twit about it so everyone knows… but I need to call someone first, so I’ll IM them to ensure they’re available… right after I blog about how happy I am about version 2 of the iPhone…
Steve and Pete, I think you illustrated an interesting point. Each of us gets different value out of the same tools.
I highly value Linkedin professionally to reconnect with past business colleagues and find little personal value using Facebook.
For Steve, Facebook is highly valuable for reconnecting with friends, while Linkedin is a professional necessity.
Pete tries to make professional connections but has had little satisfaction.
It’s becoming clear that “successful” experiences with these tools really depends on whether or not they support your goals. Just because it works for one person doesn’t mean it works for everyone.
Thanks for writing.
I found some useful tips for “How to Write in 140 Characters or Less”
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/how-to-write-in-140-characters-or-less.html