Hi Jason,
I have to agree with you too. All this ’social’ life can be very exhausting to keep up with. I think many of us decided to dip our feet into the waters of the social web and found that it was really more of a tsunami and a small, babbling brook.
An interesting point, if you watch firemen with their hoses, there are usually two, three or more holding on the line to handle the pressure. So, perhaps you need to hire an assistant to keep it all going. Hugo Chavez has 200 apparently, though one has to wonder what’s the point in his case.
Almost a month ago I decided to leave Facebook. I told all my FB ‘friends’ and gave them 12 alternative ways of keeping in touch. Needless to say, those whom I regularly talk to via other channels have continued to do so, while others have faded away into cyberspace. I’m relenting a little and re-emerging on MySpace shortly as the little social network I joined is turning into a web service and will be charging for it soon. MySpace is almost as big as FB, seems to offer more, and has a clearer & better privacy policy.
I have managed a slight tapering of the flow by using columns in Hootsuite (Twitter) and just looking at ones that interest me. If I want to read about travel, I just look at that column. Additionally, I’m no longer following a number of those following me as either (a) I don’t have the time or (b) I’m not that interested in their tweet topics.
Possibly the best decision was to set up a Bloglines account. Now I can follow about 70 sites of interest by simply receiving their RSS or Atom feed. The posts can be read without going to the individual sites, so it really saves time and ensures I’m current with what’s happening.
As Marcos said in his comment, it’s a question of determining what one wants to get out of the social web and then building a strategy to go with it. (I haven’t quite worked that out yet.) I’m fortunate in that my tiny website is not looked at that much and is a work in progress. Still, keeping up with the tweets seems the biggest challenge.
Perhaps we should re-write the etiquette for Twitter along these lines:
(1) if you decide to follow me, I may or may not follow you
(2) if you mention me, re-tweet me or send me a tweet, I may or may not acknowledge this or reply to it
(3) if I re-tweet you, I may or may not retweet all the sources before you
(4) I may or may not reply to your tweets either at all or in a timely manner
(5) I will not look back over tweets sent more than two hours ago unless they are DM’s or mentions
(6) I act this way because I want to live my life in balance.
Best wishes, Greg.
Posted June 11, 2010 at 03:43 PM
on http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com/jason_renshaws_web_log/2010/06/social-media-and-trying-to-drink-from-a-firehose.html
I have to agree with you too. All this ’social’ life can be very exhausting to keep up with. I think many of us decided to dip our feet into the waters of the social web and found that it was really more of a tsunami and a small, babbling brook.
An interesting point, if you watch firemen with their hoses, there are usually two, three or more holding on the line to handle the pressure. So, perhaps you need to hire an assistant to keep it all going. Hugo Chavez has 200 apparently, though one has to wonder what’s the point in his case.
Almost a month ago I decided to leave Facebook. I told all my FB ‘friends’ and gave them 12 alternative ways of keeping in touch. Needless to say, those whom I regularly talk to via other channels have continued to do so, while others have faded away into cyberspace. I’m relenting a little and re-emerging on MySpace shortly as the little social network I joined is turning into a web service and will be charging for it soon. MySpace is almost as big as FB, seems to offer more, and has a clearer & better privacy policy.
I have managed a slight tapering of the flow by using columns in Hootsuite (Twitter) and just looking at ones that interest me. If I want to read about travel, I just look at that column. Additionally, I’m no longer following a number of those following me as either (a) I don’t have the time or (b) I’m not that interested in their tweet topics.
Possibly the best decision was to set up a Bloglines account. Now I can follow about 70 sites of interest by simply receiving their RSS or Atom feed. The posts can be read without going to the individual sites, so it really saves time and ensures I’m current with what’s happening.
As Marcos said in his comment, it’s a question of determining what one wants to get out of the social web and then building a strategy to go with it. (I haven’t quite worked that out yet.) I’m fortunate in that my tiny website is not looked at that much and is a work in progress. Still, keeping up with the tweets seems the biggest challenge.
Perhaps we should re-write the etiquette for Twitter along these lines:
(1) if you decide to follow me, I may or may not follow you
(2) if you mention me, re-tweet me or send me a tweet, I may or may not acknowledge this or reply to it
(3) if I re-tweet you, I may or may not retweet all the sources before you
(4) I may or may not reply to your tweets either at all or in a timely manner
(5) I will not look back over tweets sent more than two hours ago unless they are DM’s or mentions
(6) I act this way because I want to live my life in balance.
Best wishes, Greg.
Posted June 11, 2010 at 03:43 PM
on http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com/jason_renshaws_web_log/2010/06/social-media-and-trying-to-drink-from-a-firehose.html
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