I came to the realization tonight that there is far too much noise in my social sphere. Not only am I faced with the disquietude, I am learning that it has become redundant as hell. We’re discussing and sharing some seriously incredible information with each other. The problem is that we are having the exact same conversations with the exact same people in oodles of places.
An even larger issue is that we don’t really have much of a choice. We have to be where our community is. Joe and Sally may follow us on our Facebook Page, but Peter and Mary only catch what we said via Twitter. Jane and Jeremy are now Google+ fanatics, so we must share our words of wisdom there, too. The more I watched this happen on my social streams last night, the more I began to crave some peace and quiet.
I adore the connections that I’ve made over the years, and I treasure the friends who have entered my life. It isn’t that I don’t want to know what you have to say or how you feel about a given subject. It’s that I’m growing weary of absorbing it multiple times in several different places. When are we going to figure out this social stuff and finally get it RIGHT?
You’re going to argue that competition is good and that no one network could possibly give us everything we need. I’m here to counter that and ask why the hell CAN’T it happen? Yes, competing sites and services are a healthy thing – for them. When you sit down at your computer each morning ready to spread your message in the social space, how the hell do you begin to know if you’re doing it correctly? Are you reaching your target audience? Is it possible you’re missing someone important? Or – much more likely – are people starting to tune you out completely because they are just sick of having to read the same thing over and over?
There’s going to come a point when enough is simply enough. I honestly believe many of us are reaching that critical stage and are about to whip out the proverbial white flag. No single person can possibly keep up with this many networks. A friend of mine stated earlier that “With all the social noise, we’re turning others into feeds and data streams. The more social we become, the less human we appear.” Oh, how true that seems to be. The more socially spread out we are, the more others see us as just another news feed.
Sadly, I don’t have the answer. Some of you are trying to figure it out. MG Siegler is trying to cut out some of the noise by giving up email for a while. Kudos to him, but I think he’s going to find that it doesn’t solve a damn thing. He’s already said that communications on other channels have increased tenfold. As people realize he’s not going to respond to his Inbox, they will begin to inundate the poor man on Twitter, Facebook, Google + and anywhere else they can manage to find him. It’s a never-ending cycle that we somehow need to break free of.
Do we need to stop being social? Of course not. That’s crazy talk right there. I would rather cut off my arms (figuratively, of course!) than give up my social circles. I DO, however, want to find a more effective way to wade through the clutter and get to the good stuff. I want to see what you’re all up to and what you think, but I want to see it ONCE so that I can move on to the next person’s tidbits of genius.
The solution really is very simple, but most people really do not see it because they have become brainwashed into thinking that everything has to happen NOW, communication has to happen NOW, replies have to happen NOW, when in fact really there is no need at al, except for inside your own head.
Recently, without telling anyone, I undertook to remove a whole range of people from my Facebook, Twitter and all the other sites. The people removed are people who have no interaction with me at all, not even a single comment, thumbs up, chat, complaint etc, so while I have tried my best to interact with them on their sites, clearly by not replying to me or interacting with anything I do, they are in fact not really interested in anything I do! SO DELETE and they are gone. Any screams or any change in my life? Nope.
Next up was to drop channels that I felt contained people who seemed more interested in boosting their own ego or self importance, at the expense of their viewers, while giving out bleeding heart stories and asking for donations of money to fund their venture.
Has this changed anything? Actually yes! No longer do I have to interact with people who irritate me, or try to protect other people who cannot defend themselves, so I leave one set of people to fend for themselves and the other to continue feeding their own ego, while I have less stress in my life.
Email checking all the time is also a thing of the past. Put it this way. If someone sends me an email rather than calling me up, then clearly the information is not urgent and can wait till a suitable time when I can be bothered. More so, if it’s over a weekend when all I want to do is relax pick up some general news and not really deal with business stuff.
So what am I left with to do with my time that I have cleared up?
Anyone who follows me on Twitter will know that I post a wide range of comments from informative, bitchy, nosey, witty (debatable I know but Im soon to block off the people with no sense of humour) or general replies to other people on my Twitter feed. I make sure that I interact on Twitter, check out people’s video and blogs (oh heck is that how I found this one… Yeah of course, it was Tweeted out). and take the time to see how people are doing in general and don’t just ignore them.
Facebook also gets my attention but mostly full of nonsense, with close friends and family, and in turn I have no need to update this instantly as I speak to them!
So, I have cut the online crap from my life, I no longer feel that I MUST DO THIS or that I MUST DO THAT, what I do now is interact when I feel like it, but regularly. The rest of my time now is spend on researching, training, and real world interaction.
I do not feel guilty about any of the changes that I have undertaken, and the only people who would complain I suspect are the ones now blocked or deleted! So clearly for these types of people, they really only do appreciate you when you are gone!
So, to everyone out there who follows other people on the various social sites, why not take the time to actually interact with other folk, why, thats what being social is all about!
G
I have to whole heartedly agree with both of you on this however I will not give up on email as I don’t get much cos no one loves me *sniff sniff*
Seriously though take for example G+ I am seeing the same S**t from the same people I.e. I liked a YouTube I watched a YouTube I wiped a YouTube’ers backside cos they couldn’t reach, in all honesty how is that being social just spamming someone’s timeline without providing any useful information to your followers and viewers. Personally I prefer to read good content or at least given the choice on whether I wish to read it or not at least give me that choice without looking on twitter, facebook etc etc looking at the same crap.
I could go on and on but I think Gordon has summed it very well and I had to leave my 2 cents worth.
Wiggy