I was on the phone with Mark the other day, and he scolded me for really not putting anything out recently. My last post was a few months ago, so I guess he does have a point.
I wasn’t protesting anything, or being paid to be quiet (that would be sweet!), just a busy time that gave me a chance to take on some new projects and re-prioritize how I’ve been spending time online.
I’m currently involved in some interesting projects at work (No, I’m not involved directly with Watson, though I hope he processes my expense reports!), and have started doing some (paid!) voice-over work – so my focus has been elsewhere recently.
I do have something to share though – You may remember the “Social Media Cleanup” I started in the fall, in an effort to make Facebook, twitter and other social sites more useful/interesting. The results have been interesting, and have led to some interesting conclusions:
Facebook :
- I’ve dumped several “Friends I don’t know”, and brought the number down considerably. My approach with it now is while I don’t actively prune my friends list, if I see a status message and my first thought is “Who the hell is this?”, they’re removed. I’m sure they are nice people. There are lots of nice people I don’t know.
Twitter:
- This is the one that surprised me. Despite the fact that I once gave a talk called “Fuck Twitter”, I really thought pruning the “people I’m following” list would make twitter more useful/relevant to me. It didn’t! So, for the last few weeks, I’ve followed the advice of my talk, and you know what? I don’t miss it. I think my twitter stream will mostly consist of updates pushed there from other apps.
Quora:
- Thankfully, this experiment didn’t last too long for me. I gave it a go, answered a few questions, only to have my answers “edited”.. If you change my answer, even if it’s just formatting, it’s no longer my answer. I stand by what I write, formatting miscues and all, they all make up my text. Not yours to change, at least, not here. Bye Quora.
RSS :
- Apparently, I’m in the minority, but RSS is still how I get most of my new information. Google reader is always open, and I still enjoy getting information that way. The ability to do “Mark all as Read” is a wonderful feeling as well. If you’re spending lots of time on blog design, don’t do it for me, I won’t likely see it.
So that’s where I’ve been, I hope you’re good too 
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One Comment
Hey Bob, I like your social media cleanup.
Facebook – the smaller number of freinds the better
Twitter – lists are good to sort and filter but 90% of tweets are still irrelevant
Quora – Bye
RSS – Agree with your synopsis. Main source of info for me too. And “Mark all as Read” is rather satisfying.