Social Media Love-In
Gotta catch ‘em all!
I’m clicking like mad as a result of the ProBlogger Social Media Love-In. Yesterday I’ve been adding a lot of Facebook people, today I added each and everyone’s Twitter, all 538 of them. Thank god for tabs and middle clicking in Firefox.
It’s going to be interesting to see how this ripples out. Already met some interesting people on both FB & Twitter, still have to work my way through the rest, but I’m really looking forward to seeing the impact this is going to have on all our interactions, is it going to make us visit eachother’s sites more, will new projects be started because of this, and so on…
For now I still have a lot of clicking to do, so for all the ProBloggers out there; hi and welcome!
And for anyone new to the party I’ll re-add my links here:
Twitter
Facebook
Linked In
Digg
Thoughts of Imbalanced Mind
I’ve only ever done it on Digg. It seems to be all right and I’m still trying to understand the reward in it. :P I do like getting to know people, believe me, but these people are only self seeking themselves. It makes you wonder.. what’s the point if they’re not actually going to want to pay attention to you?
Atleast that’s how I feel. Maybe that’s because I don’t have a cool website or blog of my own. ;)
I tend to agree with Humane on this one. The thing about social networking is, you start out with a group of people you actually know, then it spreads out and you add these “e-acquaintances” until you have them in the hundreds. I think what happens though, as you add more people, the actual relationships weaken and it turns more into something like a campaign for free advertisement. After all, you can only really do so much, and I wouldn’t want to spend more than 10 or 20 minutes looking through “profiles” and what not (currently I spend 0 minutes).
Now, for projects and stuff, that might work, but then again you’re stuck with the fact that you have a list of 400 something people that you don’t really know, and somehow a small cohesive group has to form from that.
I guess where I’m getting at is, is it really about keeping relationships and whatnot, or is it just about fancy trinkets (like Facebook bumper stickers) and mindless networking? Is there a middle ground?
I tend to agree with the above two…mainly the reason I don’t update my twitter, linkedin and what not, not that much, is simply I don’t make the time to do it. Or rather, don’t want to. Maintaining a social media network is really very time consuming and I don’t see that the time consuming weights up to the benefits you get out of it.
But then again, maybe I did something wrong all that time :)
As an IT-er I do know the importance of a social network. But I’m already having trouble maintaining the real life one, let alone the online one ;) But, seeing the post on problogger, the idea is really great seeing as they got that much comments :)
I think it all depends on why you’re doing it. I’m already connecting with people, I see traffic going up and I’m discovering new and interesting sites I otherwise wouldn’t have found. And vice versa. My reasoning behind it is that the web has changed big time since the mid nineties, and this is the thing that has largely replaced forums. Our site here has hundreds of reviews, thousands of posts, dozens of blogs, a gallery full of hundreds of wallpapers we all made together, but unless we put the word out no one is ever going to see it and our circle of regular members is only going to get smaller. Participating in social networks pushing the info out there and hopefully like minded people will come along and take a look, and maybe stick around. The days of sitting around working on your site and waiting for people to come check it out are long gone. We have to ‘go out in the world’ and spread the word.
Plus it’s good fun seeing what everyone else is up to, I’ve already come across posts on other blogs that are of interest to me, people sharing the same hobbies, alerting me to new developments.
I’m loving it.
When you look at it that way, you’re right, X. The world of www has changed and you have to spread the word to be seen :) And that’s the difference between you and me: I don’t have that urge to be seen that much as you do (yet?)
And yes, this is a way to connect to like-minded people and discover new things. But as said before, as long as I still have a hard time maintaining the real life relationships I don’t seek out the online ones :)
Hm.. well X, in the context of getting site traffic when you host a site, I’m sold!