Archive for February, 2009
Being that I work for web design company, I’m continually glued to the internet for 40 hours of my week. Not to mention, when I go home, I also check my usual myspace, facebook, and two email accounts. I’m on instant messenger all day long at work with my co-workers. It’s a common topic at Zipline to discuss social networking. Clients often bring it up in meetings and the owners of the company also try to keep as much in the know as they can about the topic. Did I mention I’m also part of Linked In and Launchpad NW (work related social networking companies) along with my blog, of course. The amount of times the words myspace, facebook, twitter, blog, and other various techy terms come up throughout the workday is quite astounding, actually. This has led me to ask the question, “When is social networking just too much?” The fact that I can keep in touch with long lost friends (most of whom I’m aquaintances with or barely know) is great and all, but knowing the amount of time of my life it consumes sometimes makes me wonder if it’s all just too much.
Lately, I have a few predicaments with social networking:
1) I hate having to update my mypace and facebook with the same information. Pictures take a while to upload and it’s annoying. Usually, I just do myspace and don’t bother with facebook, even though I have more “friends” on facebook. I just don’t have enough hours in my day to keep everyone updated on every site every day. Which brings me to my current argument about Twitter.
2) If you’re not familiar with Twitter, it’s basically a constant status updater feed so you can continually update your status and view your friends’ statuses with a continually auto-updating feed. I find this to just be ridiculous. Both of my bosses are on Twitter, but I just can’t bring myself to join. I really don’t care if you’re going pee, or eating lunch, or heading to a meeting, or pissed off about your day. Call me heartless, but I don’t. It’s just too much information. If I wanted to know that badly what you were up to…I still do have a good old fashion cell phone (no…it’s purposely not an iPhone). I’ll call you. Or I can always use the backup plan on stalking you through your myspace or facebook account.
3) How do you keep your personal life and your professional life separate in the world of social media? Lately, a few of my clients have added me as facebook friends. Although flattering that they would consider me a web “friend”, how do you draw the line between personal and professional? There are some things that I’m fine sharing with my friends, even aquaintances, but I worry that if I share them and a client sees them, will it cause awkwardness in our working relationship? So how do you resolve this? I can’t necessarily not add them, because then I’m rude. But does it mean that now I can’t post personal things about myself? Or do I just continue posting as normal and hope my clients don’t think any less about me?
4) When does it become too much? Unfortunately, part of me thinks it already has. I mean, the fact that I have a blog, in and of itself has to say something. I have succumbed to the social networking cult. I can’t tell you that I’m not addicted to my myspace and facebook accounts. After all, I did meet my husband on myspace. If social networking is already taking up this much of my time, though…how is it going to evolve within the next few years, let alone when my kids are my age. Perhaps by then, there will be no need to physically talk to anyone at all.
Anyway, I thought I would just post about this, because it’s been annoying me for some time now and even though I don’t have an answer to the problem, it sure makes a girl go “hmmm….”