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

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.)

I do pay attention to who follows me. I sometimes look at their feeds to see if they've turned more into the style that I follow. Or also just to glance at what they're up to.

I promptly block spammers. I reserve the option to report direct-message spam to @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 use 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... that's annoying. I don't hesitate to 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, or know of some significant common interest.

So if I haven't accepted a "friend request" on Facebook, 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.

Another thing not to take personally... I generally don't use quizzes or applications on Facebook unless I know who is behind them. Each one is a potentially unidentified (to you) company who is allowed to download all your user and contact information if you click OK. So a lot of them are marketing research tools, not just innocent games. Facebook keeps talking about privacy policies - but this is a problem that I doubt they can enforce adequately.

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 also participate as an editor at Wikipedia - that's social media but not a social network. 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.