To Unplug, or not unplug

[Erik Fisher]

Discussion:

In our last episode we discussed unplugging from social media specifically, and the internet in general. I would like to get some feedback on that, as well as any steps people are already taking to combat unplugging completely, while still using the internet and social media.

In other words: What social media or internet sites do you use, how much time do you spend on them, and what are your weaknesses in regards to time spent vs. benefit you get from it.

[Cliff Ravenscraft]

If anyone is wondering, we started this discussion in Episode 002 of Social Media Serenity.  If you want, you can listen to it with this player:
[mp3=200,20,0,]http://media.libsyn.com/media/generallyspeaking/SocialMediaSerenity002-HashTagsAndUnpluggingb.mp3[/mp3]

Or you could use this link to listen from the gspn.tv site:
http://gspn.tv/002-social-media-serenity-hash-tags-and-unplugging/

[JoyfulSparrow]

Short Version: Tweet Deck

The Story:
I started following a whole bunch more people all at once becuase of an online class I took (Everyone Can Write a Little by Cathy Zilske - making a scrapbook album based on Twitter & Facebook Updates.) - btw learned a new use for Twitter in this class - using Twitter as a short burst personal journal archive.

I added as many people as I could find from the class becuase a lot of people in the class had never twittered and had 0 followers starting out & I wanted to encourage them.  This put me as following more than 120 people which took up my whole day to keep track of.

I mentioned this problem on Twitter & @mardarrell recommended Tweet Deck which I now use.

I have one column that is my entire feed, then I have a 2nd column of my favorite people and when I'm busy I only read my favorites column.  From time to time people get promoted into this column (my criteria is surprisingly similar to what you described) people move out of the column & some people get unfollowed.

Tweet Deck allows me to mark individual tweets as seen & clear seen tweets from my list allowing me to see where I left off reading. On a busy day I may choose to mark all tweets as seen without reading them.

I also have a column for Mentions - I was amazed when I set this up how many mentions I had in my column that I had missed, before.  I no longer have to scan my entire timeline to be sure I haven't missed any mentions.

I also have a column for Direct Messages and a column that shows facebook udpates.  This has drastically reduced the amount of time I spend on Facebook becuase I read the updates without going on and being tempted to waste time on "fun" applications.

Tweet Deck also has a button to shorten url so I no longer have to go out to another website like tinyurl to do that. I recently notice a new button that will Tweet Shrink This Update - I can preview all of these before posting so I often edit these, but it helps me see where I can shorten what I've said.

Did I mention that there is also a toggle switch to post to Twitter & or Facebook status so I can choose where to post each message on a tweet by tweet basis another feature that helps me spend less time on Facebook.

Perhaps you can tell I am sold on Tweet Deck - I can't imagine how I managed without it.

[Patti Bagadion]

What social media or internet sites do you use, how much time do you spend on them, and what are your weaknesses in regards to time spent vs. benefit you get from it.

I'm making a real effort to cut down on my internet time in general.  I'm trying to limit myself to 10 hours a week.  This takes some planning on my part because I am a budding writer and avid blogger, and I do some podcasting too.  What helps me with that is outlining (or idea-mapping) ahead of time and cutting down on editing, both on posts and podcasts.

For social networking, I mostly use Twitter followed by Facebook.  I mostly post status updates to both, which saves some time.  I find Twitter is good for seeing what everybody is talking about and jumping into the conversation when I have something significant to contribute.  It also is a good place to post updates about my blog posts and podcast episodes and help build an audience, although I don't abuse the privilege.  Facebook is great for longer updates and other musings that might not fit into 140 characters but may not be good for a blog post.  I can also keep track of conversations better than on Twitter because I can comment right under the post instead of using hashtags all the time, which I sometimes forget.

Here too I'm trying to limit my time to 30 minutes per day, maximum, for each service.  I'm monitoring myself pretty closely and, so far, it seems to be working pretty well.  I don't always have the discipline I should, however.  Twitter is better for what I get from it vs. time spent.  I get to interact with some very cool friends and it doesn't take too much time.  Facebook is the same in this respect, but there are a lot more distractions.  I often get sucked into playing games there for longer than I wanted to spend, but I'm working on this too.  Baby steps, right?