Open Thread: Social Network Fatigue?
July 31st, 2007 (11:00am) Mike Gunderloy 28 Comments
Over the weekend, there was a brief flurry of blog activity because some of the popular kids decided they’d had enough of Facebook because they were too popular and couldn’t handle all the activity (no, I’m not going to link – if they can’t manage the traffic, why make it worse?). This led to some broader discussion of social network fatigue. It seems that some people find the social networks – Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, or what-have-you – to be such a burden that they get overwhelmed and need to drop out to reclaim their lives and retain their sanity.
There are many reasons why this can happen. Perhaps people lose sight of their original goal in joining a network, and start treating it as a competitive exercise in collecting the most “friends” without regard for any actual value. Perhaps the lack of tools for organizing and prioritizing the traffic in most social networks makes them harder to manage. Or perhaps the social network is just the pet rock of this decade and people are moving on to the next trend.
But perhaps the problem is overblown, and it’s only a few web celebrities who can’t cope with the price of fame? That’s why we’re asking you, dear readers: are you experiencing any social network fatigue? Have you pulled back or dropped out of any of your networks? Or are you still happily networking, whatever angst the A-list may be indulging in this week?
28 Comments Post your own comment
Drainedge Link Tank » Today’s Links says: July 31st, 2007 11:31am
[...] Open Thread: Social Network Fatigue? – Web Worker Daily [...]
justin says: July 31st, 2007 11:33am
I’m 26 and am a social networking dropout. Once I got a life and a girlfriend (who I met on myspace, incidentally), I just don’t have time to leave people useless little messages or share pictures of myself making funny faces on a site that is about 100x worse than flickr for sharing photos.
I guess I also grew tired of how much work it became to tell the world about the intricacies of my relationships with family and friends. I started to realize that was some info that was better kept private, and that News Corp, Google, and Facebook don’t need to know.
Karen Norteman says: July 31st, 2007 12:07pm
Social networks are fun enough, but they can be an enormous time-sink if you let yourself get too involved with minutiae. You need to strike a balance between what you want and need out of the network, and how much of your time it should take. Like Justin, I don’t have time to leave continual “junk content” — nor do I care what my friends are up to every 5 minutes of the day. They can read the stuff they want to know in my blog, or we can even use (gasp) the phone!
My company has a large and active network on Facebook, but I’m not entirely sure that it gets used to transact much business. There’s probably a lot of information about oneself and one’s private life that need not be posted for all 30,000 of one’s co-workers, either.
Matt Harwood says: July 31st, 2007 12:41pm
Twitter and the like are fine for me, quick and simple. I cannot see a burnout for me, personally, in these types of ’social networks’ (I don’t believe they are).
Facebook, Linkedin, MySpaz etc. are a different kettle of fish entirely. They require some kind of time-commitment, and simply put – time is valuable. If you don’t get an acceptable return on your time (be it new clients, existing client updates, or fun/enjoyment) don’t bother.
My 2 pennies worth!
Chris Miller says: July 31st, 2007 12:59pm
With the numerous sites that are cropping up daily, I see many co-workers that were already lost in the world of instant messaging being drawn deeper away from real work with postings to social networks.
I am all over them but find that if they offer a RSS feed I can then import that into Jaiku and still have one place for friends and my blog readers to go.
I still run my daily blog and only peek at new sites to see what they do but fall back to one or two key ones to keep my sanity.
BeachBum says: July 31st, 2007 3:49pm
No Burnout here. I check MyBlogLog every day and the rest once a week.
BeachBum
Jay says: July 31st, 2007 5:20pm
Talk about angst. This post seems like a reactionary bit of fluff from a frustrated blogger. I honestly have no idea what the big issue is and the fact that you offer no extra information about the subject doesn’t help. Why not expound a bit, otherwise it just comes off (to me) as whiny. Am I being too harsh?
Nordie says: August 1st, 2007 1:18am
I’ve not got burnout, because I didn’t really get sucked in in the first place. I have a social presence on LiveJournal, a professional one on Linkedin, and a personal hobby one on WordPress.
Facebook, Myspace, secondlife etc I’ve avoided like the plague, as I’d much rather actually go out, meet people and do stuff that keeps the three I’m on fed with interesting information. Internet Celebrity? No thanks!
Craig says: August 1st, 2007 1:51am
I don’t get network fatigue because I run my own social network :) It’s just like anything though you have to have a balance. I will say however that it gets annoying everytime you login to MySpace you get a hundred friend requests… it starts to become just like SPAM where you just ignore everything because it takes to much time to wade through it all.
Mathew says: August 1st, 2007 4:00am
I use Facebook for communication and updates from old and distand friends and (ex-)colleagues and I use LinkedIn for finding business contacts (and being found) as well as getting updates on the wereabouts of ex-colleagues.
I don’t have my wife, kids or close friends in either one as they are people I get to see every day.
RJ says: August 1st, 2007 4:57am
I can’t even bring myself to login to my myspace, facebook, etc. accounts anymore, because I feel obligated to respond to people, read their comments, accept friend requests, etc. The whole thing is just irritating. I run my own site, with an ever-so-old-fashioned forum and communicate with friends there. “Social Networking” is a dying trend in my opinion. It will evolve to more localized and real circles and communities.
Vad NU! » Blog arkiv » Opgør med ligegyldige netværk says: August 1st, 2007 5:07am
[...] Web Worker Daily hævder, at det kan man. Og jeg tilføjer for egen regning, at det især er en risiko, hvis man vælger at ignorere de ting, som sociale netværk er gode til – og burde bruges til – for i stedet bare at følge de andre lemminger. [...]
Michael says: August 1st, 2007 6:58am
Like Nordie above, I never really got the “fever” for MySpace, Facebook etc.etc.
As others have observed, the actual “value” of participating in such stuff may be a little overrated – and from my point of view social networks gets too much attention in the media as well…
I do – however – like to participate in forums that are related to specific topics (f.ex. Ubuntu), but keeps it down to 3-4 (incl. the forum I’m running on my website) – active participation can take up a lot of time.
LinkedIn is the only of the more known social networks I’m presently using, and even that only gets my attention 1-2 times every second week or so.
randy says: August 1st, 2007 7:46am
There was an interesting site I checked out, several years back, called “9 degrees.” It created a network of people loosely associated with you using the “Kevin Bacon” effect. There were different ways of displaying the relationships; one I remember was a picture of a cloud that you clicked on to see more detail.
Honestly, I don’t “get” social networks. The current manifestations seem like gossip farms and a way to divert time and attention from more productive/useful/creative ways to spend one’s Life.
I have hope for social networks to evolve into something which can be of benefit, but don’t see it in the current versions.
Eric S. Mueller says: August 1st, 2007 7:52am
I’ve found a slight value to social networks. I’ve had high school friends find me through My Space, and even a former neighbor contacted me. Where I’m burning out is in the people who use social networks for less than honorable purposes. Before I set my My Space profile to private, I was getting 5 or more “friend requests” a day from “21 year old single females” and “win a free ipod” profiles. At first I would check the profile of anyone sending me a friend request just in case I actually knew them (I’ve had teens from my church send friend requests after I taught their class last summer) , but after I while I got burned out keeping up, especially when most of the “21 year old single female” requests send me to a page asking me to install the malware MySpace Viewer. Besides that, I’m a 33 year old married man and my profile picture clearly shows my wife and kids. I’m not interested in explaining to my wife why I have “21 year old single female” buddies that we don’t know.
Social networking has a lot of potential, but like other mediums this one has fallen prey to the nefarious. I also don’t think friend requests should be collected just for the sake of collecting them. Just about anybody in my friends list is somebody that I know.
Shaine says: August 1st, 2007 5:52pm
I like social networks and even use them to keep in touch with friends. On the other hand, I don’t want my social networking to become a job.
iNotebook.mobi » Rojo: Facebook Fatigue; 700MHz Fallout; Conspiracy Politics says: August 2nd, 2007 9:12pm
[...] Scobleizer crowed about how Calacanis’s retirement meant fewer competitors for him. Oh, the popular kids can’t handle all the activity, blogs Web Worker Daily, while allfacebook is sure Calacanis cries himself to sleep from all the [...]
iAmateur.mobi » Rojo: Facebook Fatigue; 700MHz Fallout; Conspiracy Politics says: August 2nd, 2007 9:57pm
[...] Scobleizer crowed about how Calacanis’s retirement meant fewer competitors for him. Oh, the popular kids can’t handle all the activity, blogs Web Worker Daily, while allfacebook is sure Calacanis cries himself to sleep from all the [...]
Dave Kinsella says: August 3rd, 2007 5:21am
I’ve avoided social networks for as long as was feasible, given that in the past I’ve lost immeasurable quantities of time to various online communities (Worlds Away on Compuserve, Ultima Online,any number of forums and IRC).
However I now find that I can control the urge to keep up-to-date with what’s happening. I think I’ve realised the value of switching off. When I take a holiday, I enjoy not checking my email, not switching on my mobile phone etc. It’s relaxing to fall off the face of the earth for a few days every now and then.
Mark Dill says: August 3rd, 2007 7:46am
I’m an old man, 53 this month. I have Linked-In, my daughters have Facebook and MySpace. I have been in technology companies all my life, AT&T, Nortel, Corvis and I’m currently General Manager of Web Strategy at a Blue Cross company. Here’s the deal. There is always froth. Witness the tech bubble and subsequent bursting. Same thing on a smaller scale here. Does that mean this stuff is the “pet rock” of double-oh’s? Get real. Will the craze settle down as the novelty fades. Likely. But at its core, social networking has meaningful utility. As the rising generation infiltrates corporations, government and other institutions — or starts businesses of their own and need to interact with customers and suppliers — this stuff will settle into the “boring” pattern of mainstream. This is so obvious I was compelled to comment not because the question has any merit, but out of my amazement that you asked it in the first place.
Eloquation » Blog Archive » Why I deactivated my Facebook account says: August 6th, 2007 8:05am
[...] claiming Facebook bankruptcy, and the other is because is perhaps reflective of a general sense of social network fatigue that I am [...]
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ricgalbraith says: August 9th, 2007 2:45am
they’re all wimps, wimps! I have about 20 online profiles, work 12 hours a day and retain a very active social life, ultimately the ‘a-listers’ are massive geeks, they’re not built for popularity, and now they have it, they dont want it.
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[...] found a post on webworkerdaily.com last week about people discussing social networking and how they are “over [...]
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Web Worker Daily » Archive Open Thread: What’s Your Social Network Strategy? « says: June 26th, 2008 11:00am
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