Communication by Soizick Meister
I am not deleting the accounts. I would still have the ambassadorships there so people can find me. But I do plan to minimize my visits to the sites, max out the privacy settings in Facebook including the exclusion from the search result. Un-follow the static Twitter noise. I have been actually doing this for a while as my dissatisfaction with the social media grew stronger but the final push was listening and reading Jaron Lanier, now I know I am not alone in my observations.
Reasons to hang up on Twitter:
- I might be interested in what my real friends are doing; I am certainly not interested in a stranger’s itinerary.
- I initially though that Twitter is a good service to get to know people but I found a grid full of self promotion and little incentive in making a real contact.
- Twitter gravitated towards the broadcast model, if I want to listen without being able to respond I might as well listen to a radio.
- 140 characters are inadequate to express anything coherent.
- People who pimp Twitter for marketing and promotion strike a religious tone that in itself should be enough of a turn off.
- There are many users who tweet obsessively. I rarely find any value in their stream and links, but I am often concerned for their sanity, what else they might be missing in life?
- The so called “real time search” is a sham.
- The most annoying parade of Twitter/marketing experts and consultants. How stupid you need to be not to be able to figure out the f-ing 140 characters on your own?
- Twitter management is in over their heads (I met one and wasn’t impressed). The “suggested users list” killed this service for good.
Reasons to hang up on Facebook:
- All Facebook Apps are intrusive and stupid, grownups should know better.
- I am not interested in becoming a fan of any pages. I might be interest in what an actual person has to say. They way to make me to subscribe is to show some worthwhile content that resonates. Not to subject me to the spam links. I get this “fan” email from people whom I barely know, or friended because I didn’t want to offend them. And instead of taking this as an opportunity to get to know a person they want me to become a fan of some silly page, how rude.
- I think it’s dim to commit an original content to Facebook, without any control on how the content is displayed. This devalues the expression and lets Facebook monetize your ideas with cheap and inappropriate ads.
- No one is listening on the Facebook. Everyone is pimping something all the time so people just tune everything out.
- There is noting more idiotic that the “likes”. I actually seen recently someone “liking” a status update announcing being sad about a friend’s suicide.
- There is a certain indignity in using the Facebook.
- Most importantly there is no evidence of a deepened connection with Facebook friends. In fact there is nothing that has done a bigger damage to the real, lasting, face time friendships than the social media.
P.S. Jaron Lanier addresses specially the distorted peer pressure on teens who grew up with Facebook, the only collective, social form of life that they know. I can’t say it any better than Jaron.
