So sometime in class last week we touched briefly on FourSquare and the pointlessness of it. People said it was a bit creepy to be able to see where you have been, and others say it’s a serious threat to security, which I do agree is another valid point. However, someone also mentioned that their biggest problem with foursquare is that it clogs up their feeds on twitter and facebook, and they don’t want to see hundreds of check-ins over the last two hours from five different people. That made me begin to thing about my twitter. Looking at my last 50 tweets, 36 of them are either me unlocking badges on foursquare, or checking into places, and that upsets me a little bit.
Over the summer, I felt horrible because I had no choice to remove one of my dearest high school friends from twitter because I saw 80 tweets day that were either her checking in, or just having conversations with other people via tweets. How annoying is that? I told myself it was justified, and now here I am probably being that same annoying person. So I’d like to take just a second to apologize to everyone who is following me on twitter for my constant check-ins, which have to be extremely annoying. I’m going to do my best to start using twitter for what it was meant for. I hope you can forgive me, friends.
I think you propose a pretty interesting conundrum, especially since the point of social media is to cultivate relationships and as you pointed out, a lot of the things being posted on Twitter and Facebook are often conversations between people that you, as reader, could not care less about!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you were in class for Matt Brown's presentation, but I thought his best point was about using social media to "add value." He was proposing that every action within social media that you initiate should somehow be involved in the process of "one-sided generosity."
Now I would be the first to admit that not everything I do within the realm of social media is "valuable," but I think you have made a step in the right direction by recognizing a better use for your Twitter page and attempting to back that up with action!
I just wanted to say that I really appreciated your post - great point! And that I'm trying to follow in your footsteps. :)