How I use Social Networks

So many people have different expectations of what the various social networks mean to them, I thought it would be helpful to describe how I use them.

Twitter

	My Twitter accounts
	@ikluft	@KO6YQ
What it means	my first initial and last name	my Ham Radio callsign
Overview	aviation, rockets, space	radio, software, technology
Topics	Aviation SJC Airport Commission RHV Airport info Flight Instruction GPS Safety Space NewSpace industry Rocketry Black Rock Desert	Silicon Valley Technology Internetworking Open Source Software Linux Perl/Ruby/Python Amateur Radio SJ RACES emergency services Non-profits sbay.org Stratofox SVWUX

Twitter's exponential growth in the past few years has been partly because people can find many different ways to use it. For me, I use it like a news service. For the most part, I only follow accounts who have news-ish feeds on topics that interest me - aviation, rocketry, amateur radio, internetworking protocols, Open Source software, etc. But not so much news that I couldn't keep up.

Likewise, I try to keep my tweets generally newsworthy. For topics with more personal details that I just want to share with friends, I take those to Facebook.

With the exception of a few friends, generally I don't follow people whose tweets get too personal, like what they're having for meals or other mundane happenings in unfamiliar cities far away (unless they're telling us about a vacation.) The most common reasons why I might not follow you are...

You tweet too much
It overwhelms my feed. Even if it's interesting stuff, I won't let anyone prevent me from hearing my other friends.
TMI
There are many articles online about this. For example, see "Twitter TMI Syndrome and How to Avoid It".
You tweet about things I'm not interested in
I had to deal with this too. That's why I split my own accounts between @ikluft for aerospace and @KO6YQ for tech. I heard that tweets on each topic were driving away followers of the other.

I block and report spammers. See @spam.

I know that a lot of people use Twitter like a follow-fest, expecting others to follow them in return. That's fine. Don't take it personally if I don't follow you back. I might add you to one of my lists instead. I read Twitter as a news service that I try to keep at a readable pace. On the other hand, anyone who does cycles of unfollowing and refollowing me to keep tossing a reminder in my mailbox... I just block them.

For people that I do know, we probably also want to connect on Facebook and/or LinkedIn.

Facebook

I use Facebook almost the opposite of Twitter. That's where I do look for friends to share more details about what's going on. All my "tweets" on Twitter get automatically forwarded to my wall on Facebook, but not the other way around.

I only connect as "friends" on Facebook with people whom I have actually met. I've become a lot pickier about who I accept as friends on Facebook as the system's reputation for privacy protection has declined.

I block most applications on Facebook. If you send me a quiz, I'll probably block the application and unfriend you. Facebook isn't important enough to mess with that.

LinkedIn is yet another different case. It's a professional network. As with the other social networks, some people have different ways they use it. Similar to facebook, I only connect with people whom I've met or worked with online. I'm not looking to get any records for the most number of connections. I care more that all the connections have some meaning.

So like with Facebook, if I don't respond to a connection request, we probably haven't met. Don't take it personally - it's just how I use the system. Send an e-mail and introduce yourself if you want. I enjoy meeting people with common interests.

E-mail

E-mail was the original social network of the Internet. Though we don't really consider it one by today's definition. But as a way to get in touch, it's still the fall-back plan if the others don't work.

For most of us it goes without saying that we still use e-mail. It's hard to say whether the Internet will evolve to a point where that ends. More likely e-mail will evolve at some level to follow the Internet's trends. Only another internationally-recognized and widely-deployed communications standard could ever replace it, not just any single-company web site.

I ported the first full-featured mail server software to Linux in 1992, and maintained it for some years for the Debian and Slackware distributions of Linux to get them started with it. So I was the first administrator of a Linux e-mail server. And my e-mail site at home, which pre-dates commercial ISPs, is the longest-running Linux e-mail site in the world because it was first.

Others

These are the social networks I use right now. They're the systems where I've found that enough of my friends are there that it's interesting to me. I don't have time to try all the social networks.

Of course, I maintain my own web site on Kluft.com. So for me the social networks are useful tools to keep in touch with friends. But I already have the resrources to post information or photos online.

I used to participate as an editor at Wikipedia - that's social media but not a social network. Eventually I followed the droves who are giving up on participating in Wikipedia because of the rampant incivility. Dysfunctional social media erodes its own foundation. Wikipedia has an article about a 1970's paper which describes the element of Human nature which is turning into its own downfall, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness". Organizations which call themselves unstructured do have structure - but they default to letting the last bully standing have the last word. That's rarely good for recruiting volunteers.

I also maintain many wiki web sites that use the TWiki software - and I do some software engineering contract work for TWiki.Net.

As the Internet social landscape changes, I'll probably use some other systems. We could even set up some smaller-scale local social network projects at the South Bay Community Network, of which I'm one of the founders and currently an officer of the non-profit corporation.

Created by Oatmeal