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Introduction
From what I’ve encountered with the social networking experiences of these social softwares is that it has taken a lot out of my normal routines and schedules. I now have to allocate time on certain days or have to make a mental note in my head so that I can remember to check these websites. If I didn’t check or return to these websites, my friends would be disappointed at me because I missed the message that they tried to notify me of. From my opinion, these socialising websites are a waste of time, but it’s essential in some aspect, it’s useful in some situations but I wouldn’t be using it as the source of my everyday communication.
Delicious
With delicious, this was one useful application, I didn’t use it as social software, just more of a piece of application that I could refer to anywhere. For example, I found a very useful site at university on one of the computers in the labs, but I really couldn’t be bothered writing down the link, so that’s where delicious came to play, I could easily save the webpage and easily go back to it when I wanted to at a different place in time and location. I am happy to now know of this useful web application, now I wouldn’t have to just say I saw it somewhere, I can actually show people if I needed to, for assignments and for entertainment.
There are many times where I find something on the internet while surfing around, but I didn’t record it because I thought that I could retrieve it if I just googled it the following day, but when I tried I couldn’t find that webpage again, with this application this problem wouldn’t occur. I can see myself using this new discovery not often, but once in awhile when I come across certain pages I find at locations which isn’t my laptop, so that I can refer to it anytime I want without have to record it down on paper or like how I used to do it, send myself an email with the websites that I visited while at a friend’s or at university.
FaceBook vs. Twitter
Well, it has only been recently when I joined both FaceBook and Twitter. Both these applications I find very useless, I really don’t understand why people feel the need to go on these web applications. From my knowledge, some of my peers go on these for at least 4 hours a day, I really don’t see the point of this where if you want to talk to someone, you can simply call them or SMS them with a mobile phone or if you have to leave a message it’s as easy as an email.3
My first experience with FaceBook was that I had to spend some time on it, setting up my profile and add in some pictures with a bunch of other stuff. Then I had to accept all the invitations that have already been sent to me about 3 years ago and then it made me send out invitations to some people that haven’t yet signed up to FaceBook from my Hotmail contact list. After that, I came to realise that all it was was a message board for what you’re currently doing or occupied with, I don’t see the point of this application, I could easily tell people what I want them to know the next time I meet them face to face.4
One problem is that my peers use this system to communicate messages across even though they have other forms of communication, because I have signed up to it, they automatically assume that I’m going to use it as often as they do and they begin spamming on my wall. After I few days later when I actually meet them face to face, my friends ask me why I haven’t responded or did I look at the links that they sent me, all I could reply back was “I haven’t checked it for a week or two now, I’ll check it as soon as I remember to.” This has created a problem, now I have to visit this website more often than I anticipated because my peers would be annoyed if their messages didn’t get to me on time.
I made the same mistake again thinking that Twitter will be much beneficial to me, but I later found out that it’s very similar to FaceBook. All Twitter is is just another social mobilizing micro blog service, but without those applications that FaceBook support, which makes it less time consuming and annoying. At the same time it far more useless because of that fact that it’s simple, people just randomly post up what they’re doing at that particular time, like what they had for breakfast or that they skipped it and had brunch. These are very useless comments and there’s no point for me to have the need to know any of this.
Flickr
This software seems to be quite okay in that it doesn’t draw your attention too much. This piece of web application allows users to post up images that they have made, taken, snapshot or found throughout the internet. I have use this a few times to use as a storage device, where I can upload an image and use it for another purpose like a reference for a signature in a forum. This has come in handy for another purpose such as getting feedback from peers about my assessments that involves pictures. Other than using it as a storage device I haven’t really used it as a social image sharing application, I don’t feel the need to browse through pictures randomly, I only look at some when my friends direct me to them.
MSN & Skype
At this point in time I have been using MSN, which is an instant messaging system, this has been around for a few years now, and it has evolved quite a bit from what I remembered. It was only text based, and now it has microphone chatting and video chatting, emoticons and personal message and personal picture displays. Because I have been using this application for a long time, I’ve always found it very hard to start investing time on other social softwares, I have limited times nowadays.
I believe using just one social networking piece of software is enough, there is no need for others as MSN by itself is already distracting and time consuming. MSN sometimes has its downside in that it doesn’t work all the time and it keeps getting upgraded, there was this incident when my cousin couldn’t get her MSN to work on her new laptop, she could operate the old version but not the new one. So I thought of another piece of software that was as useful as instant messaging, Skype. I used Skype as a way to communicate to her how to fix up and reinstall the new version of MSN, this was far more useful than FaceBook or Twitter. By using Skype I was able to tell her step by step instructions and she could respond to me as soon as she didn’t understand the instructions I gave out to her.
Another point that I would like to point out is that Skype is a much more interactive way where people can interact over long distances. My friends grandparents live over in China where the distance between them is vast, but he and his grandparents often have face to face video meetings on Skype as if they were actually face to face in real life. Because of the easy use of the application where one can just talk and communicate rather than typing which takes time, grandparents and older generation people can operate and communicate more easily with the technology. They don’t have to learn to type, only input numbers to add new people on their contact list.
Time Consuming Applications
Just reflecting on the previous mentioned social software applications, I have some points that refer to most of them all a whole rather individual situations. Most of these applications can become addicting in any way you put it, so I try to limit the uses of them all to just one or two, that way I can stay in contact but at the same time enable myself to be occupied with other types of activities. Another way you can describe the uses of these application is that it’s the next generation way of being couch potatoes.
Some of the reason why these softwares can be a waste of time is the way it’s structured, there’s too much of a difference between the ratio of noise and signal, and also the ratio between temptation and productiveness is far too high. One form of noise is this term called “half conversation” where users may have a conversation between two or more people, you’re only following one of them, this creates a noise or distraction on your twitter account and you might want to understand their conversation but you can’t unless you follow the person their chatting with.2
From curiosity this grows and attachment to use these applications, you want to find out more about other people and how they’re related to whom and how you can be related to them, and because you need to follow the people that your friends follow to understand conversations you’ll end up on the never-ending cycle of randomly following people across the globe. Once you stop to read your own wall, you have a hard time understanding every conversation that ever existed therefore wasting more time.2
With most of these applications you have the privilege to customise your profile and wall/page, this in itself is distracting because you want to show-off to people who you are and what makes you you, your identity in the cyber world. This is again another form of time wasting when you have multiple social sites that you need to update whenever something in your life changes.
Conclusion
To wrap this blog up, I’m most likely going to stop using or limit my usage of these applications and stick to just one. I know this is what people in this day and age rely on to communicate so I can cut myself out of society because it wastes so much time, I’ll just try and limit my use of them greatly. I simply don’t understand sometimes why people are so obsessed with it they spend hours long on them each day. Instant messaging would most likely be my most active piece of software in the future, because it also offers offline messaging, so there can’t be an argument against having asynchronous conversations.
References
1 - Twitter hate shirt - http://geekandpoke.smugmug.com/gallery/5367267_weDSw/1/329191070_6mXBi#328609605_kbGmL
2 - Why I stopped using Twitter http://publishing2.com/2007/12/11/why-i-stopped-using-twitter/
3 - FaceBook Haters - http://www.facebookhaters.com/?p=3
4 - FaceBook Fatigue - http://gigaom.com/2007/07/29/facebook-fatigue/
5 - 25 things I hate about FaceBook - http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2009/25-things-i-hate-about-facebook-p1.php
4 comments:
"so I can cut myself out of society because it wastes so much time"- Okay, so I haven't read a blog putting a negative perspective on social networking yet. So this was refreshing, and a strong argument all the way through.It made me want to deactivate my Facebook account- and I did ... O.O
I have to admit I too found people spending endless hours on social websites a waste of time, cause as said it really isn't that necessary to join all these sites for communication.
I've had friends ask me "why don't you have facebook" etc. I personally choose not too since if they want to contact me they can use msn, phone or text message.
I'll agree there is nothing wrong with having a conversation offline on msn since it is possible, just depends on the person your talking to whether they'll respond back or not whilst offline.
Yes, agreed that many of the social sites can be useless but not all, they sometimes have some interesting quality about them that can make me use them. However that does depend on what it is.
Overall nice reflection, and very interesting view on all of these sites :D
It was good to see that someone had a really strong opinion throughout the article. To be honest, I felt like a fat couch potato as I was reading this hahaha and I quickly closed Facebook and Twitter not long after finishing reading your article. I'm probably one of your friends that has gotten angry at you for not replying on Facebook or something but now I know to use MSN or my phone. I think you did a good job in pointing out how unnecessary certain types of communication can be useless especially since applications like Skype are around yet people choose to use Facebook and MSN. Its a bit weird how people would rather type than speak on a phone... I wonder if type writers and homing pigeons are gonna be coming back anytime soon.
I've often heard the use social networking sites (particularly Facebook) referred to as a "second job". The amount of maintenance and time required to keep virtual profiles updated doesn't seem worth it to me (so in essence I agree), but I can understand why some people would - a hobby's a hobby and time can be spent on many things with varying levels of constructiveness.
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