Too Much
by Dylan on March 26, 2009
The internet is a funny thing. It seems that the more I get involved with it the more I have to get involved with it. I am on Twitter, Ginx (which uses twitter), Facebook, MySpace, worpress (both at wordpress.org and for my personal site), I have a site I designed for my clowning, there is Sarah’s Blog, Google Groups, Google Reader, Gmail, Google Apps, Etsy, viddler, Google Calendar, flickr, iTunes, and Aims Community College’s site
These are all the places I visit on a daily basis. And for what? I don’t get anything from these sites. Sure, I might get a little bit of traffic from some of them but do I really need all of them. I am not like Harper, a super internet guru. In fact I really don’t like all of the crap that you “have” to do to be successful on the internet.
What should I do? I am thinking about killing all of my accounts. It will make my life simpler and give me more time to do what I like to do, write. I am a little worried that my 71 followers on twitter will be lost without me, but since I only know about 10 of the rest are not my problem. The same goes for my 170+ facebook followers. Sorry but I don’t really need to know that you are my friend, person I didn’t even know in high school.
Should I do it? I can’t really decide. I thought about making a list of pros and cons but didn’t feel that the internet is worth that kind of work. I will, of course, keep blogging and that sort of thing; I am just done with the whole social networking thing. It is too much work and I haven’t seen enough reward. If I wanted to have to work at it I would make the internet into my job. Since the internet is just a hobby I will limit it to the things that I like. Like games. And my blog. And possibly Etsy.
5 comments
the trick is aggregations. Make it so you don’t have to participate in all the sites. make your blog or twitter the only place you participate. then have it feed the other places. that way you don’t have to update everything. you just update what is important to you.
I am also very against deleting accounts. You can usually keep accounts dormat with no ramifications. I choose that. Look at my myspace account. I just make a message that says “i don’t check this. email me”.
with that said – i do a couple things:
a) Google reader
b) Twitter
c) Chat
d) Facebook
e) Blog
My Google reader, blog and twitter feed into facebook. so all i do is message people there when they message me. I have a contact page on my site that allows people to call me through grand central, email me or chat with me. I can control that. I blog my complex thoughts and update twitter with my day to day thoughts. you are a better writer so i think it makes more sense for you to blog more than twitter. but you could install the plugin that updates twitter (and therefore facebook) with your blog posts. So you can kill two birds there.
anyway. i am rambling. my thoughts are: don’t quit. aggregate. Make it easy. and simple.
by harper on March 26, 2009 at 12:16 pm. #
The aggregating method sounds interesting. I just need help doing it. What I want to do is make it so the only place I update is the blog. Since I get my twitter/facebook updates from google talk and gmail respectively I don’t need to worry about updates.
That being said please help me set up this aggregate business.
by Dylan on March 27, 2009 at 6:17 am. #
What are you selling on Etsy?
by Larissa on March 27, 2009 at 4:26 pm. #
I sell little stuffed creatures. Check out my shop: awesomeguy.etsy.com
by Dylan on March 28, 2009 at 6:20 am. #
Way cool!
BTW – I completely understand the “too much” sentiment and I don’t even keep up with that much. My MySpace page is completely neglected at this point. Facebook is hard to keep up with all on its own. I’m also on goodreads, I keep 2 blogs and I follow over 100 blogs on google reader. I’m on a website called The Nest which consumes way too much of my time. But all the same, it’s hard to give any of it up.
by Larissa on March 28, 2009 at 10:30 am. #