Over the next two weeks, I will be dramatically dialing back my day-to-day participation in Facebook. There are several reasons for this.
1. Facebook has become a generally negative place. If I am going to spend time browsing, I don’t want to do it in a place where the vibe is generally negative. I look at my Facebook wall and the vast majority of what I see is people complaining, or people ranting, or people deriding one group or another. I see enough of that in the real world. Facebook seems to act as a magnifying lens for negativity and I’ve had my fill.
2. Increasingly limited time. With my efforts to write everyday, coupled with the day job, and the family, my time is increasingly limited, which means the available time is increasingly more valuable. I don’t want to spend that valuable time in a negative place.
3. Twitter is better. My opinion, of course, but I’ve really grown to embrace Twitter, and now like it much better than Facebook. Much of what I see on Twitter is duplicated on Facebook, or vice versa, but at least on Twitter, it is limited to 140 characters, and often far less.
So what does this mean from a practical standpoint? Well, it means this:
1. My blog posts and Tweets will still be posted to Facebook. Mainly because this function is completely automated. I don’t have to take any additional action. However, beginning very shortly, not every Tweet I make will automatically be relayed to Facebook. I’ll only relay selected Tweets (like notices of new blog posts). And more and more, I’ll be shifting my Facebook presence to my author page instead of my personal profile. If you want to keep up with the day-to-day stuff, follow me on Twitter.
2. If people are just interested in my writing or paperless/technology posts, I’d encourage you to “like” my Facebook Writer Page instead of my personal profile. I’ll be more active there than on my regular Facebook Profile. If you are not married to Facebook, you are better off following me on Twitter, where I am more active.
3. My more regular social interactions will take place here on the blog, or in Twitter. The former because it is my playground, and the latter because, as I said, I prefer the compactness of Twitter to the sprawl of Facebook.
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I’ve already started implementing some of these methods, including automated posting to facebook from my blog. I still use G+ for social interaction, as my blog doesn’t have a lot of traffic, but I could see that diminishing as well if my blog takes off.
Hear, hear! Lately it seems to me that there’s three facebooks – the advertising dumping ground, the long winded, often political or religiously motivated rants, and the rare updates from people I don’t have contact with in any other medium.
That may actually speak for itself.
Sadly, I have to agree with you about Facebook. However I do have many friends in the horse world who I interact with SOLELY via FB. So, I’ve made the decision myself to really cut back on the time I spend there and focus only on keeping up with friends and family on there.
As a teacher, I deal with enough negativity on a daily basis, so don’t need the added negativity on FB.
Unlike you, I’ve just not been able to get into Twitter. I’ve not found a good way to keep up with it and the info streams just move too fast for me to keep up with it. I DO see it’s usefulness, just not been able to make it work for me to keep up with it.
It must be something about the type of friends I have, but my facebook wall is filled with baby pictures and references to obscure poets. But either way, I agree, I love the platform of twitter, particularly when it comes to the literary community, it’s a lot easier to interact with people you’ve never met, because “following” someone feels different than “friending” someone. Hope it works out for you.