The Upside of Social Media

If you've read any of my earlier posts - you'll know that I've always had mixed feelings when it comes to social media.

On the one hand, it's a huge time-suck and it's easy to get distracted and spend useless hours updating your status(es), profile(s), and all responding to others' messages, opening cool links with YouTube videos in them, etc.

With so many social media outlet clamoring for attention - you also have to check multiple services with multiple logins - and then try to keep track of all the "friends" (or "followers" or whatever) you have on each service - and then post relevant stuff to that particular site.

Which site do you check most often? Where should you invest your time? If you have a Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, MySpace and Yammer accounts (which I do) - who the hell has time to check/update all those sites? Even with aggregation tools, it's a nightmare.

Every time I watch Twitter feeds live - I feel like I'm watching the matrix of humanity just like in the movie.

So, I've started to focus a lot of my attention on a couple of services: Twitter and Facebook. Just those two are enough for me at this point! Even then, I have a fairly large number of "friends" on Facebook - but it's nice to read the interesting status updates, browse other folks' pictures and just keep in touch with people.

There are a lot of sad moments, happy moments, silly moments and basically everything in between. I don't comment on a lot of the posts - I mainly just "lurk" - but there are some people who could just really use a bit of encouragement now and then - so I'll post a comment (or snarky remark!).

I don't know about you, but I feel a bit impotent writing "You're in our thoughts" or "You'll make it, don't worry" or some other equally dazzling comment. I mean, I really hope that person gets it worked out or that things turn around for them - or whatever - but it just feels like a store-bought card versus a hand-written one.

You never really know if what you said was even read - much less if it even helped the other person.

So, I've been sort of lax in my commenting of other people's status updates lately - but all that is going to change.

You see, this weekend I was on the receiving end of those comments - when Brenda went into the hospital with a heart attack scare (she's fine - heart is OK). Beyond the incredible support of our family (shout out to Theresa, Julie and my mom!) - the number of caring, thoughful posts on the status updates were something that really helped me out.

In the long hours sitting and waiting (and waiting, and waiting, and waiting!) - I was able to update my status multiple times - and would find myself checking back every 10 minutes to see if anyone responded yet... and 90% of the time - someone did.

It feel really good to know that others were out there lending a sympathetic ear and offering their encouragement and support.

It was beyond just what they said (which was really encouraging) - it was the fact that they took the time to read my status update (among the 100's they have in their News Feed) - and then took the time to formulate a response.

It really made a difference to me - and was very moving.

For those of you who don't have a Facebook account yet - sign up at Facebook.com - and if you are on Facebook - look me up: facebook.com/bobcusick and "add" me as a friend (there's no "acquaintance" or "some jerk" buttons, unfortunately).

Once again, I want to THANK all the Facebook folks who responded to our situation over the weekend from the bottom of my heart.

I'll Link-Twitter-Book-Face-Ster You Later

OK, so I'm here in Amsterdam with journalism heavy weights Joel Dryfuss, Amy Wohl and Dan Tynan - and we got to talking about Social Media over dinner last night at cool eatery called "Envy".

Between bites of "frog butts" and a cucumber gazpacho - and I asked them their opinion on social networking - and I expected that their much more informed, much more well educated, much more in-the-know experience would produce a lively conversation.

Well... it did.

Now I've said here that the whole social media thing really is hard for me to keep up with - as I have a "real" day job. I can barely keep up with all the email, snail mail, IM, SMS, and voicemail stuff - and now I'm having to check my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn account to update them, check for other missed messages, etc.

What was very interesting - is that everyone agreed on this point.

Really.

Wow! I mean these are professional journalists that pump out a huge amount of content for some of the best-known publications in the world (not to mention the SaaS book that Amy is writing, the child rearing articles that Dan writes and the "multiple book projects" that Joel is working on) - and they (we) all have the same problem: social media is tough to find the time to deal with.

The problem lies in the fact that there is no "one" outlet for people to be "social" on. In the beginning, there was MySpace, and tweens found it to be a place where they could "hang out" and be themselves.

Then came Facebook. Then came Plaxo, Twitter, LinkedIn, and about 200 other possible places for you to post the most intimate details of your life for all the world to see. That's fine.

The crux of the problem lies with friends. The more you invite and add - the more invitations you get. It's a never-ending cycle of adding (or denying) people with at least 6 degrees of separation between you and a "real" friend. It's like going to a family reunion and meeting 200 total strangers who are related to you (somehow).

To make matters worse - all these "friends" now leave you messages. And Twits. And write on your "wall." And send you virtual crap (drinks, animals, etc).

The answer? Just say no. Unplug. Hug your kid. Make love not war.

There's no way (unless you're extremely motivated and have loads of time) that a popular or busy person (with a life and a job) can go through all the possible places in the world that people can get in contact with you. Dan Tynan turned me on to FriendFeed (I'm sure there are 10,000 more just like it) as a way to manage the deluge... but you still have to plough through all the entries, etc.

I remember the days when you had one email address, one home phone, and one business phone. The end. I never missed a call, people would write "letters" or they would make arrangements to come over to the house and have a BBQ to catch up.

Now they just nudge-twit-wink.