I think I’ve pretty much gone full circle on my social media usage. I’ve been blogging in one form or another since 2003, and my blog has evolved from stories about the Happy Pitbulls to random findings from the web and now lately it’s a collection of random scenes from my travels through Woodland and beyond. I was an “early adopter” on Twitter too. I’ve got close to 8,000 tweets logged over the past 3 or so years, and I’m followed by more than 1,000 people (most of whom are probably fraudulent porny accounts, but I’m not sure). I’m not getting the same value I used to. I used to actually connect with people there, but somehow, it’s devolved into a collection of links and posts and retweets, breaking news updates, and a bunch of other nonsense.
When I was dedicated to building our social media program at work, I refocused my social media activity to be specific to work-type topics: Government 2.0, User experience design, etc. I started to censor myself and then I really cut back on my Twitter activity altogether. My personal connection started happening on Facebook. But even there, I have 400+ friends (some from high school, some from college, some from work, some virtual friends that I’ve worked with on committees). It’s getting less and less personal and social and more just a distraction. And by distraction, I mean I keep checking to see if there’s something new or personal directed to me, and there’s not.
Over the past year, I’ve really cut down on a lot of activities that were just not fitting into my schedule. I killed my Farmville Farm and my Mafia Wars accounts, much to the chagrin of my neighbors and fellow mobsters. I stopped watching as much TV (with the exception of watching the entire 6-season series of Lost over the course of 5 weeks).
And a recent shift of my responsibilities at work removed social media from my job function. While I’m still interested in what’s going on in Government 2.0, I feel like it’s time for me to go back to my roots and personal connections with my social media usage. I’m not a brand or commodity. I’m a silly geek girl with a couple of goofy aging pitbulls. Time to get back to that at the core.
It’s time to put my social media in check. Stay tuned for the great de-following of 2010. Time to simplify.
