Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Dumping social media

Ban linkedin, ban foursquare, ban twitter, ban facebook
Ban linkedin, ban foursquare, ban twitter, ban facebook
Today I looked at my Facebook usage. I've had my Facebook page for about 8 weeks. I put it up on April 21st and had regrettably, to set up a Facebook account in order to control the feeds. Needless to say the Facebook account was 100% automated with postings coming automatically from blogs, Twitter and Foursquare. As per normal with what I call the social media garbage accounts (Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook) I don't care at all about them.

In the two months the Facebook page was up, it had a grand total of 17 likes and during that time I began to question what the Facebook page was for. Originally, it was there to publicise my blogs. As it has so few likes (mostly obtained in the first week), there seems singularly little point in continuing with the Facebook page or the Facebook account.

As far as Twitter goes, it might get viewers to my blogs - as long as I link to specific posts. I notice that specific posts seem to work. The rest of it - no way does it work. Clearly I need to work on Twitter scheduling and posting frequency - reducing the frequency and targeting posts to specific blog entries.

As far as Foursquare goes, I just have no idea what need that actually fulfills. Aside from being a massive security loophole where you tell everybody where you are so they know you're not home, I see nothing else that Foursquare does. I certainly don't see anything positive. As far as I'm concerned, it can take a hike. Sure - it's fun watching my tour around North Korea - for blog viewers who view my Twitter account as the feeds come in from Foursquare. That's about it though.

Facebook has a similar geo-location feature that I've turned firmly off. I fact, I wouldn't allow Facebook on my phone because of its geo-tracking features. Twitter has had them turned off too. There is no reason on earth for any of this geo-tracking other than it has been sold heavily to young people as being trendy without mentioning that just about anybody now knows your location.

The way most people use Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare is to publicise every aspect of their lives for anybody that wants to, to see. This is largely why I have dispensed with LinkedIn, Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter. Nobody needs to know what I am doing, 24 x 7. Nobody needs to know when I am visiting my friends, where I'm having lunch etc.

LinkedIn was dumped a few days ago. I'm not sure quite what happened as the communications didn't make an awful lot of sense. It seems that somebody probably didn't like my disagreeing with a blog article and decided to have a go at me. They chose the weak points - my profile photo was not of a human but then quite a lot on LinkedIn aren't either. Then they claimed my LinkedIn name wasn't my real name and that I'd been spamming. All very interesting and all big stretches of the imagination. Thus LinkedIn suspended my profile and refused to let me copy my recently updated profile until I agreed to change my name (what to, God alone knows). I agreed, went in, copied my information and just told them to delete the account. In my 8 months on LinkedIn, it had generated no interest at all. It was pointless to continue.

A few weeks ago, I chatted with a recruiter. He apparently checked people's linked-in profiles against their submitted resumes and rejected those that didn't match. Honestly, how many people even look at their LinkedIn profiles? It seems employers regularly check up on people online. Yet another reason not to have this online garbage. I'm pleased to say that I don't have very much of a trail and where there is a trail, it's easy to clean up. Twitter is easy to delete - there are no real Twitter archives. Pretty much the same for LinkedIn, Foursquare and Facebook. And a darned good reason to be rid of them.

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