24 Days, 0 Tweets
Last December, I took a vow of radio silence from Twitter for 17 days, and although I did find some peace in being untied to my iPhone, I also found that I missed online engagement more than I’d expected. This year, I’m upping the ante, and going Twitter and Facebook-free for 24 days to try and understand more about how social media tools truly impact the life of someone who works in the business itself.
Neither of my top clients — the paying nor the offspring variety — are doing anything on Twitter or Facebook over the next three weeks. So why should I? What can I learn from the online community that I shouldn’t be learning from the people and magic and family that surrounds the holidays in my own home? And what is it about my world that is so important and exciting that I need to disengage from it to broadcast to the world? I’m guessing, not much.
My motivation last year was a $100 credit to Anthropologie from La Gringa if I was able to keep the vow. I don’t have a carrot yet this year. I better think about that.
Now there are logistics to keeping me completely off of Facebook and Twitter for over three weeks. I don’t have self-restraint, so I’m going to have to remove all temptation. Here is how I plan to do it:
1. Remove all social media monitoring tools from my desktop (this is no small task).
2. Remove Tweetdeck and Twitterlator Pro from my iPhone.
3. Go to Twitter.com and set my preferences to not receive any alerts to my mobile device (that’s cheating!)
4. Go to Facebook and set my email alerts to none.
5. Remove FB app from my iPhone.
6. Leave a post/tweet of the day I will be returning (this is mostly for work stuff)
What do you think? Think you could do it? I challenge you to try.
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Three Time-Saving Product Ideas for #FB
It’s hard to argue that Facebook, with 500 million active users, has succeeded in finding a simple — and addictive — way for people of all ages to communicate. Rumors fly daily about what the next feature will be, how #fb plans to steal your identity, your first-born, your future. But truly, all Facebook really steals from you is your time.
I have no idea how long I’ve been on Facebook. A long time. I’ve been a power user (Scramble games in the afternoon, stalk ex-boyfriends at night), to a casual engager (messages with old high school classmates that hated me back then, but seem to be excited to know me now). I’ve ditched Facebook completely for months on-end. I’ve used it for work, for clients and for self-promotion. I’ve used it as a voyeur, a supporter, a loneliness killer. Facebook is in world-domination-mode, and there is very little anyone can do to stop its momentum. But, we can curb our own.
I believe Facebook owes us the one thing we can’t get back: Time.
Here are my three product ideas for Facebook that focus specifically on helping us all curb our #fb obsession:
1. Self Timer. Set FB self timers so that you get logged out after X amount of time and cannot log back for Y amount of time. Just think: self-controls for the un-self-controlled. I’d allow myself a half-hour, with a forced 12-hour logout.
2. Give me a way to consolidate down my friends. Afterall, those of us who’ve been using the product long enough have added many people over the years we don’t really need anymore. Or, like me, FB is strictly personal now and not meant for workplace banter. Give users the ability to view, multi-delete and, ultimately, put friends into lists without having to do it one-by-one. That would save me time and get my people all sorted out. While you’re at it, FB could — and should — allow us to download our address books into a .CSV file.
3. Allow us to self-regulate spam and spammers. It’d be helpful to know who was a blabber, a spammer, repost-freak-o-matic. It would save a lot of time if the community was allowed to rank posts — display weighted versions. I know Most Popular is supposed to do that, but it’s not helpful or time saving. Give us the chance to see only truly relevant content. Oh, and if something is really spam, it would be very helpful to just go ahead and get rid of it for us.
At some point (and past the 2011 IPO, right @gseevers?), Facebook is going to have to become a time saver, not time waster. It’s going to have to be serviced-based, it will have to have an easy way to find good nuggets of information, and weed through the junk for us. They’ll have to find a way to let us utilize our own address books for efficiency in our offline lives.
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What’s on Your Mind?
Facebook, the modern necessity of communicating with family and friends, is about the only thing in the world that always wants to know what’s on your mind. It’s like the perfect guy: always wants to know what you’re up to, will tolerate stories and girlfriends chiming in to support your blabber. It appeases our need for attention and curbs lonliness. Afterall, at least Facebook always wants to know what’s on your mind.
But do I want Facebook on my mind? I’m not so sure the feeling is mutual.
Facebook to me is a necessary evil. Its mass reach potential gets the word out to my family (yes, even my mom, my brother, my aunts and cousins) and friends about life events. It keeps me up with theirs. It put the daily happenings of others in the forefront of my narcissistic mind. Facebook fills the need for me to communicate in a 1>many environment. But is Facebook a place to tell the world what’s on my mind? Not so much.
My Facebook friends include high school friends who tormented the shit out of me, whom, with few exceptions, I don’t really give a good-gosh-darn what’s on their minds. My little Fbook gives me access to work colleagues too. And quite frankly, I’m not really into what’s on their minds unless it has something to do with our industry. And if I care enough, I’m already pulling in the RSS on their blog, follow them on Twitter and likely see them in person. So why do I care what’s on their mind?
As for what’s on my mind, that’s another story all-together. If you ask @la_gringa, there is always a laundry list of things on my mind. I’m not sure that Facebook will ever be my personal place to share what I’m thinking about. Facebook friends are people I already know, have known or wish I didn’t know anymore. Messages on Facebook are crafted. Groups to join are intentional. Interests are deliberate. That, I would argue, isn’t what’s on my mind, it’s rather what I want to communicate. What I want the world to know, to see, to believe.
If you want to know what’s really on my mind, you can find it about 15 times per day when I spout it off on Twitter . A state of mind is fleeting, a Facebook status is face time. Totally different in my mind. Twitter is truly a microblog for me. It’s my place to be naughty, silly, angry, funny. It’s a place to be real. Want to know what’s on my mind? Follow me in 140.
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Side Gigs
