Trimming the fat

After announcing which social networking sites I was using, I’ve now dropped two: MySpace and Twitter.

Both sites I joined on a whim – I only personally knew one or two people on each, and I’ve not invested much time in growing my networks on either. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that a) I wasn’t exploring the potential of either, but more importantly b) I had no interest in doing so.

MySpace

Although I enjoy music, I don’t feel the need to have the bands I listen to as ‘friends’. I feel it far more worthwhile to indicate my appreciation for a particular artist by actually, you know, listening to them so Last.fm is a far better fit for this.

In addition, with only one or two exceptions none of my real friends can be found on there so it’s use for actual networking is pretty limited.

Twitter

I liked the idea, but I can’t remember exactly why I signed up. Whatever goals they had in mind, I’ve only found it to be a poor mans Instant Messenger. I found a few twitters actually interesting (and in one case even profitable) but the vast majority fell into the categories of:

• Interesting links – usually TinyURL’d due to the character limit which makes you less likely to click. If I find a link interesting, I’ll put it on del.icio.us, not spam my IM contacts with it!
• Blog posts – again TinyURL-ified. Again there is much better solution for this – it’s called feeds
• Half of a conversation one of your ‘friends’ is having with someone not on your list

I think the problem here is that Twitter is push-based, whilst I prefer to choose what I want to consume and more importantly how.

Certain features were cool, like being able to ‘twitter’ from my mobile (at no cost).

Delete, not discard

I could have simply stopped using both services, but I decided to take the step of actually deleting my accounts. If I find I miss them or I discover a compelling reason to use them then I may re-create them. Until then, I’ve got two less distractions to worry about.

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