Not content with having deleted my MySpace account last week, I’ve just deactivated my Facebook account. That doesn’t mean I’ve deleted it – it just means that it’s not currently active. Everything can be retrieved at a later stage, and I’ll still be friends with all the same people when/if I do return.
It’s just a bit of an experiment over the next 30 days to see whether or not I actually miss it. I use Twitter, email, blogging, and the odd bit of Skype to connect with other people. I don’t have a particular problem with Facebook – I just don’t find it as useful and engaging – and a lot of the time it just feels like work.
So – if I’ve disappeared from your social media world, I do apologise. It’s certainly not personal – and it’s probably not permanent… unlike my split with MySpace, which was (at least to me) more like a long-overdue and acrimonious divorce.
Right now:
You should follow me on Twitter here
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I’ve got my Facebook account set up so that my tweets also update my status there and my blog entries go into my “notes” section. I only go there to:
a) confirm/deny friend requests
b) ignore most of the “fan this” and all of the “what rotten meat are you?” stuff
c) comment back to assorted friends, mostly those who’ve commented on my status.
Keeps my Facebook time way low.
I’ve got MySpace tricked out so that all my gigs go there automagically from ArtistData. I don’t visit MySpace even once a month anymore. I’d cut it loose completely except there are still booking people who insist on it.
I understand why people do that, but it just comes across as almost spammy to me. Especially the Twitter auto-updating Facebook thing. It’s so transparent most of the time – people know that you’re not talking with them in a particular space, you’re just broadcasting at them. Firing messages from the outside, with no hope of actual interaction. I like my social networking to be more sort of social.
For me, social networking’s not about work (though it’s invaluable for work too almost as a side-effect) – and thankfully, it’s not about promotion.
Twitter is just a byproduct of the day that I’m having, the people that I’m talking with, and the way that I spend my time. It’s a chat. Like making conversation with the people in your office, while you get on with what you’re doing.
But Facebook felt like a bit of a chore. It wasn’t just something that happened as a natural outpouring of what I was already doing – it was a job I had to set time aside for. It’s not an ambient technology, but a place to visit in order to perform some tasks.