Social Media Fatigue

Are you suffering from social media fatigue? Take a look at this article.

But what bothered him most was how the site seemed to suck up all his time. Without even thinking about it, he caught himself automatically checking Facebook on his phone while sitting at the bus stop.

It seems that this could be a major issue for some people. The emphasis seems to be on followers or friends -- quantity over quality. But how do you deal with all the stuff that comes from thousands of these? People collectively spend 700-billion minutes per month on Facebook according to the company. That's a little hard to believe. For the 6-billion inhabitants of the planet, that would mean each one spends 116 minutes per month on Facebook. And, consider the number of people on the planet who don't have access to the Internet and of those who do, how many don't have access to the Facebook site(s).

One site estimates that there are 2.1-billion internet users in the world (March, 2011). That raises the time to 350 minutes/month. If these users sleep eight hours per day, then in the average month, the users spend 1.2% of their time on Facebook. And, of course, not every one of the 2.1 billion inhabitants of the planet with Internet access are Facebook members.

Facebook says they have 700-million active members. That means that these users spend 1,000 minutes/month on average on Facebook. That's 3.5% of their waking hours on Facebook. That may be more time that some of them spend with their kids. (We could get into all sorts of analysis of how many have kids, but you get the idea, it's a lot of time.)

And many of us are on other social media sites -- Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. How do you keep up with it all. Or maybe the better question is, DO you keep up with it all?

I mean if you follow thousands of people on a service, how do you keep up with the torrents of stuff that comes your way? I suspect that many of us start to treat social media like much of the other media to which we are constantly exposed. It washes over us, but we don't pay it much attention. It is just there, competing for our attention, but not really noticed consciously. We become numb to it.

The Berlin Wall

The road where the museum is located was divided in two on August 13, 1961, and some 2,000 east German residents were expelled from their houses to allow the communist authorities to secure the new border.

[source] I was there. My dad was stationed in Ulm, Germany, at the time. We had to have bags packed and be ready to leave with 24 hours notice. That was 50 years ago. Things have sure changed in that time. Here I am writing something that is potentially read by people around the world. The dividing line between cultures is being defined by electronic walls and social media is spurring further change. The wall was up for 28 years. It's mind-boggling to think what the world will be like 28 years from now.

Social Media Newbies

I'm convinced that the only people who follow me on Twitter are people who want my business. OK, there may be a few others like family or friends, but not many. You can tell the newbies. You get a notice they are following you and you wonder why. So you bop on over to their page, take a look around . . . and you still wonder why.

OK, they grabbed everyone in a geographic area or who even remotely did something related to their business or is male, or . . . The idea seems to follow me so I will blindly follow them, see their tweets about their product or service and be tempted to buy their product or service.

Well, here are a couple of tips for anyone doing this . . .

1. Don't assume that I will follow you just because you follow me.
   Quantity is not my motive. I really don't care how many followers I have or how many people I follow. I'm more interested in following people who have something to say that I am interested in.
2. If you do want to get me to follow you, say something I'm interested in.
   No, your next sale isn't interesting to me, but maybe something about what you do IS.

After all, it's social media, not sales media. You will get my interest by having something interesting to say--by telling me something helpful that I don't need to buy to know. By doing that, you are showing me your expertise and peaking my interest in the area you are selling into. Maybe even eventually getting my business.

Which, after all, is your sole reason for following me in the first place . . .

Google+ The New Facebook

I made the mistake of starting an update on one of the laptops and now, I'm waiting for that to complete, so I thought I'd dump some thoughts . . . I was invited to Google+ and have joined. It's yet another place where I am on the web. Not enough members yet to actually become a regular third place, but someplace where information can be shared. To me, it's a lot like Facebook. The only thing that I see as an advantage is the ability to post only to a particular circle. This allows you to say something to just your family, say, rather than the whole world. We'll see if there will be enough people signing up for the service to make this feature worth it.

What causes you to post?

I have written about this before, but what causes you to post something on social media? I know some people constantly post things about where they are and what they are doing. They take pictures of friends and family and even strangers and put them on line with witty comments. They check in while going to the grocery, the gym and maybe even the restroom. No, it's not those types of posts I'm thinking about. It's the type of posts where you express an opinion, talk about something in the news and the like.

This week, it appears that the debt limit crisis and the inaction of the idiots (politicians) in the zoo (Washington D.C.) which has caused several posts on my blogs. I think my blogging depends on what is happening and where I am. I happen to be spending some time at the computer at the moment and find that, as I read news about the inaction on this subject, I find it easy to put things down (or rather up on the web).

Taxes - Internet sales, that is

Taxes, we all pay them. It it said that "death and . . . " are the only sure things in life. But this time, we are talking about sales taxes on Internet purchases. For the most part, we don't pay them. When you buy that book, the money for your purchase goes to the location of Amazon or Barnes and Noble, say, but the taxes that would be charged if you bought the same book from a brick-and-mortar store, say your local Barnes and Noble bookstore don't come back into the community. Your local community looses. All the services supported by local sales taxes looses and maybe one of your neighbors loose their jobs, too. I'm not really for increased taxes, but I do want those services, so I'm in favor of paying state sales taxes on online purchases as long as those taxes come back into my local community to help support the programs I want.

Expanding Places - Google+

I'm in another place -- Google+. You gotta love it. More places than things to say. Today, I'm putzing around with a Google Chrome add in which will allow me to post to both at once. One feature of Google+ that I like is the ability to limit posts to a particular "circle". There are things that I want to share with my family or close friends that I don't want the world to see. Pretty nifty if it works as advertised. How many places are you?