Social Media overload

You are doing it wrong..

I find it kind of ironic that lately I miss news and updates on my social channels because there are so many and with added features and fluff and gimmicks, it’s just information overload. Facebook and Google+ are adding more and more feature and give you more and more tools to shape your channel into what you want it to be. Yes, the upcoming features for facebook are going to make it a bit easier to send out targetted messages but frankly. It’s still shouting in on one side and you are listening on the other side without really being able to control what is being shouted at you from a particular source.

What I would wish for is much more control as “receiver/follower/friend” over what content I follow and which updates I get from a source. For example, Google+ just added a new feature to share your circles – yet you cannot reorganize your circles well enough. I realize that the need for this implies that the people I am following might not be using their channels right or I am following people that are not 100% relevant to my interests. However there will always be a grey area when it comes to filtering relevant information. The twitter lists and facebook lists are a good start since it enables me to know what content to expect if I do my list naming correctly and tailored to my interests. However, it takes more and more time to try to stay up-to-date and trying to not miss any relevant information. Wasn’t the idea of google.reader and social media to get to your information faster and more efficient?

Another issue that bugs me, is that social media has become increasingly unsocial. People automate their tweets, is that really what social media was meant for? Obviously for marketing purposes, we will always find ways to bend the intend something was meant for and use it in a way that seems more beneficial for us but in the end you just end up being a number that shouts at someone without really getting anything worthwhile back. It doesn’t justify the point that people are obviously not necessarily interested in dialogs and conversations. It makes social channels just another information website to read.

Definition of social according to Wikipedia:

It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.

So, in the wider sense, we are still within that definition but people seem to be social while also being much more detached. Isn’t that a paradoxum per se? A lot of younger people prefer to interact through their many social channels rather then meeting up with friends face to face and that behaviour is also easier to exploit from a marketing point of view. While it has both advantages and disadvantages to be active through social media I think the biggest danger comes by the time you prefer to talk to your best friend through facebook instead of taking time to meet up. Just a little side-note though.

It has never been more important to focus on who to follow and categorize your channels properly if you want to be sure to miss as few important updates as possible. Weed out sources that are just blaring at you with information you are getting from elsewhere as well. What I personally really want is high quality contacts on top of my friends I want to stay on touch with and that is the actual challenge of using social media nowadays: Filtering the high quality contacts from the low quality ones. However, with all the added features to the different channels it seems to be increasingly hard to make this distinction. It doesn’t help that maintaining your channel with all the changes coming so fast and keeping it up to-date and adjust to said changes, takes time. Time we hoped to gain with using social channels..ironic, again.

Don’t get me wrong, this is coming from a gamer and internet addict but I am not sure the whole social media overload is going in the right direction. It still should be about interaction..that’s the fun part about being a human being. In the end it comes down to what you want from your social media experience: Botted information or true feedback and interaction. It seems you can easily get both.

Filtering relevant information and the decision to do so is going to be the key to efficiently use social media and not get overwhelmed and forget to go out and enjoy the sun once in a while 🙂

So for me: userfriendliness > features, kthx!

Or am I totally off the road here? I wonder what others think 🙂