Posts Tagged ‘myspace’

Chewing the fat

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

After dropping a couple of social networks, then being invited I’ve been doing a bit of thinking, mainly about the value in ‘broadcast’ mechanisms like Twitter and Ponce Pownce. This train of thought lead me into a chat with the-man-that-needs-no-microphone Nik Butler, who is a big fan of social networking (both on- and off-line).

As these sorts of chats are want to do, we did stray quite far from the topic of social networks, but as well as putting the world to rights he did make me appreciate some of the benefits that can be gained from putting the effort into using these sites. This, coupled with the realisation at several points through the day that there were things that I would like to broadcast, but didn’t warrant a full post here has led me to re-register with Twitter.

I’m hesitant to commit to too many networks though – having to maintain a status in Facebook, Jaiku, Twitter and Ponce Pownce is straining. Ideally I’d like to be able to edit one (or any) of them and have the others reflect that. I use Gaim Pidgin because I want my IM in one place1. I use a feed reader so that I don’t have to go to different places to get content. How long before there is combined client for social networks?

Although I have U-turned with Twitter I stand by my decision to drop MySpace, although my decision had nothing to with class. Quite simply it had almost no value for me in return for maintaining.

1 Although I had to fire up another application to be able to have the chat with Nik.

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Trimming the fat

Monday, July 9th, 2007

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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