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25.3.09

I’m saving my brain cells for me, not social networks 

Photograph by http://www.flickr.com/photos/detectivesteve/ on FlickrI have said this before, but I think I might have finally got bored of Twitter and Facebook.
   They are both important tools. And in some ways, great tools. They made me wonder: what on earth did I do before they were around?
   Getting on with business, that’s what.
   Those were the years I built a great network around me, one which I still rely on today for a lot of the things I do.
   I had always known this but it came to a head when our router at head office failed on Sunday. I enjoy the times without the ’net as I plough through old emails and get a sense of fulfilment. I found I had missed it. And when tackling emails written in 2005 last night, I was ticking things off my to-do list.
   When things were trying at this company about three to four years ago, I blogged as a mental escape. It was useful to do it, anyway, as it helped promote the companies and in the early days, I got a lot of traffic.
   Now without the negative influences that were around back in those days, I did discover that there was one habit I didn’t shake. Web 2·0. I got deeper and deeper into that world—blogs, Facebook, Twitter.
   There’s nothing wrong with any of it, except when you already have really good web properties about, why was I contributing to someone else’s bottom line?
   Or, for that matter, neglecting those who came to support us?
   Facebook is addictive, as is Twitter. But for the times you are on either, thinking you are chilling out, you’re still using brain cells. I often wondered why I was more tired after having frequented the sites, thinking my brain was coasting on neutral.
   I’m not going to cease going to either as they are vital for modern marketing, and you don’t give up on over a thousand people. I have friends on both whom I want to keep in touch with and it has become a habit for them. Fair enough: I was there not long ago.
   However, I have deleted Facebook from my Firefox pull-down menu and it’s helped my sanity considerably. I started early on Twitter, in 2007, though I didn’t use it regularly till a few months ago. Again, it’s helped a lot with traffic, but I see the stuff I have to do on our own sites, and simply get a bigger buzz from that.
   It’s time to move on, especially now that both are , and the feeling of being part of a small community of like-minded people wanting to change the world is no longer there—the same thing once happened on email when spam got out of control. Do I really need a microcosm of the world when I have the real thing right outside my doors?
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Comments:
I can see what you mean by this post. I, too, have grown rather tired of Facebook - but for simpler reasons. I have stopped uploading every single update on my life (pictures-wise). Plus, after the recent debacle they had with the TOCs, I'm more careful about what I upload on Facebook. As for Twitter, I still enjoy it, but it can be quite tiring trying to keep up with everything and everyone.

As for blogging - that's still a passion for me, maybe because I see it as a personal reflection of my life ..almost like an online diary. It's therapy for me - it's cathartic!  
I can understand blogging being therapeutic, Adèle—oftentimes I view it similarly. On Vox, where as you know I blog a lot, too, there are privacy settings and that’s been quite useful for putting in things (and people!) that I don’t wish the general public to know about.  
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Note

Entries from 2006 to the end of 2009 were done on the Blogger service. As of January 1, 2010, this blog has shifted to a Wordpress installation, with the latest posts here.
   With Blogger ceasing to support FTP publishing on May 1, I have decided to turn these older pages in to an archive, so you will no longer be able to enter comments. However, you can comment on entries posted after January 1, 2010.


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