Splintered Social Connections

I find myself spending less time on any one social media site these days, and a lot less on most of them, simply because there’s a fractured use pattern now among my friends and family…

I check Facebook daily — of all my SM sites, it’s the one where I interact the most, but several of my friends have withdrawn completely from the site whether for personal reasons or out of protest for FB policies. I found that of those who remained, very few were updating with any regularity so checking in became less of a frenzied necessity. That said, I do tend to sync my FB app before I leave the house so it’s up to date.

I realized in September that over the summer I had pulled waaaaay back from Twitter and now I only log in a couple of times a week instead of daily (or multiple times daily). Sometimes I feel a little disconnected but I don’t regret pulling away at all; I know where it is when I need it.

While looking through my photos, I also realized recently I’ve been neglecting Flickr. I used to be on that site all the time and have met some fabulous people through there and I did feel guilty for not posting so frequently. In part this is because my photography habits have changed; I seldom take my DSLR with me since I use my iPhone almost all the time — and while it is easy through the FB app to upload photos there, it is not so easy to send photos to Flickr (the apps I’ve tried all suck in one way or another); I have to Dropbox them first then upload, which means I forget to add them. I’ve started going back through my photos and uploading more. Hopefully I can get back into a regular pattern with Flickr.

Google+ never quite caught my attention. I tried — really — but it’s a very different circle of friends on there. However, once Kiddo started using it, I started checking in more frequently — not every day but certainly more often now. I may not post with much frequency on G+ but I’m in there several times a week.

LinkedIn has some very specific uses and I do use it as needed and make reasonable efforts to keep it updated.

I acknowledged that Pinterest and Tumblr and Reddit are all HUGE time-sucks in my life so I have actively tried to curtail my use of those. I dip in when I have time or know I just feel like killing time. Of the three, Pinterest gets more attention than the other two simply because I know more people there and feel more comfortable commenting.

I still use GoodReads (though I do tend to mostly check-in via the app) and check in with IMDB from time to time. I am far more likely now to open my Google Reader and just skim then “mark all as read.”

And then there’s the stuff that really fell off the list… StumbleUpon, Quora, and Empire Avenue. I just felt like there was nowhere near enough time to devote to any of those sites. When I do have time that would have gone to these sites, I use it to check in on user forums at Zibbet and Amazon.

So what am I doing instead? In a large part I’ve been writing… but as usual, I’ve started a whole lot of things — stories, collections, novels, articles, reviews…. even a bunch of other blog posts… but I’ve been unimpressed with all of it so I haven’t finished much at all.

I don’t know what it will take to get back on track but I know I need to get there. I thought cutting back on some of the surfing would help me focus but instead it’s just made me feel less collected. Sigh.

How about you? Where’s your social media use at? Are there sites you’ve abandoned or new ones you’ve embraced? I hear MySpace is gearing up for a comeback….

Photo: “Social Media Mess” CC-BY-NC-ND Kexino