In light of the below Christmas Eve rant, I thought it would be good to share how we use various social media and web stuff. If you are on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, various bloggin stuff, I would love to hear how you use each. Here is the way I use em.
The Facebook
I use Facebook very sparingly and for a relatively small range of functionality. I post photos and videos I want friends and family to see - my smartphone does this in an integrated fashion making the process easy. I also interact with friends just sharing small likes and comments along the way. I update my Facebook status from my Twitter feed but don’t do that on the FB site. I do not do any games, applications which I have to join, etc. etc. If you ask me to take quizzes, surveys, play Zynga games I will simply delete those requests without any thought. I spend a very small time online with Facebook but utilize the site daily.
The Twitter
I am ambivalent about Twitter. I used to read RSS feeds in a feed reader but I find myself rarely doing so these days do to browsing my Twitter feed. I use Twitter to read news from various sources, read links from interesting people and to interact with friends in a fully public way. As mentioned above I update my Facebook status from Twitter so I do tweet basic life stuff from time to time. I also use it to announce stuff, post links to resources and throw up pics through my webOS twitter app. I follow only a few people I do not know personally. If I do not know them I usually follow if they have some expertise in some field in which I am interested. I sometimes want to converse with people on Twitter and interact with stuff people tweet. I find Twitter terrible for such interaction and better for just blasting stuff out to the masses. I spend too much time each day reading my Twitter feed. I’m not proud of it and it has messed with my reading habits.
The Blog
I use my blog to write things that are longer than 140 characters and things which are more essay oriented. If I want to share links I now tweet them. Unfortunately I used to write more about things I read online before Twitter. My blog has been up since 2004 and I try to use it as a place to publish written pieces on various subjects of interest…most common would be theology, philosophy, technology and stuff I am reading. Over the years I have used the following blogging platforms: Blogger, MovableType and now Squarespace. I luuuv Squarespace. I’ll share personal stuff there from time to time but I have done that less of late. I constantly break the “rules of blogging” mainly in that I write long posts that nobody will read. I have never had a blog in order to “have a big awesome blog” but rather a place for thinking, publishing and posting writing I do for real people I know.
Geolocation
I currently don’t play Foursquare (I did in elementary school at recess though), I don’t Gowalla and I don’t check in with Facebook Places. I know it is cool to tell the world where you roll and become the mayor of BW3s. I just have not been interested in that schmack until now. Never saying never though.
So, how do you use online stuff? Still on MySpace? Orkut anyone?