Not sure if this is the right catagory, but it kind of looked the closest place to me. We have all kinds of social media, and online friendshops must be at an all-time high. People have sometimes hundreds of people listed as "Facebook friends". We interact with others on forums like this, as well as places like Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, and more. Texting has replaced talking, telephone, and even email. I do enjoy Facebook, but only have family and a few friends on the page, and most of them I have checked the unfollow choice. I do not play any online games, and don't care if someone just scored 500 points in Candy Saga, or whatever game they are playing. I don't even care if they are having french toast for breakfast or if their dog got into the trash and spread it over the kitchen. So, I only follow my kids for the most part, and then go down the friiend list and see how everyone is doing when I want to. Which social media is best, and how do you deal with your Facebook being littered with unwanted "shares" and "repost this or 20 years of bad luck" posts ? ?
I had a career, where it was expected to use wiki's and social media. One of the best unintended consequences of retirement....no social media. I had a FB account when it first was popular and after about a year, I dropped it, until last year when my 80+ year old mom asked me to get back on, so she could "Facebook" me and the wife. I just don't get the appeal. Kind of like calling from the aisle at WalMart that I often overhear, from your cell phone. Now ham radio, I can get in to !!! Haha.
I have had a Facebook and twitter account for a long time but will admit I rarely use Facebook anymore. When I first joined both sites, it was more for promotion of my photography which meant I made lots of "contacts" which turned out to be a pain in the butt. Like you @Yvonne Smith , I have no interest in people's breakfast choice, how many times their new baby went to the bathroom, etc. so I rarely go on the site anymore. I still contact my daughter through FB on occasion because she lives out of town but other than that, I haven't looked at it for months.I now use twitter and google plus to promote my photography.
I find that social media has actually taken us further apart, rather than bringing us together. People now-a-days will post something on FB instead of picking up the phone or visiting. They just put it out there, with no idea if anyone else even sees it. It's funny, you mention how you don't care what someone had for breakfast, etc. I, too, get tired of seeing a million photos of someone's baby, or whatever else they are posting, but if I were talking on the phone with them, this is the type of thing we would chat about. Or if I visited, they would pull out their photo album and we would sit for a while and look at all the cute pictures of their grandkids. I find it sad that the younger generation sees social media as the ultimate in socializing. They are sadly losing the ability to sit down across from someone and have an enjoyable conversation - a give and take of this is what I'm doing, what are you doing.
I don't spend a lot of time there any more, but I check in with Facebook at least a couple of times a day, and I love it. Through Facebook, I was able to reunite with several former co-workers, family members whom I haven't seen since we both were children, and others who are far apart, former students, and even the guy that I rented a house with when I was eighteen years old, after moving to California. It's great to keep up with former EMT and paramedic students of mine, some of whom are nurses, doctors, or owners of their own ambulance companies now. The only downside of Facebook is that it's possible to waste a whole lot of time there if you let yourself, especially if you let yourself play Farmville or Mafia Wars.
I have a FB account and have been working on LinkedIn be cause I need to be in front of people who may need my services. I don't think that is what I am accomplishing, I don't spend alot of time talking back and forth with people who I don't really know. I will ask for a person to send me an email instead of a phone call so that I do not spend a lot of time on the phone answering questions.
I live in Thailand as an expat - my father lives in Spain (mum too when she is well enough - last few years she has been at home in the UK with my sisters). So I need Facebook to keep in touch. Someone set me up with LinkedIn years back, when it was invite only (and I was still working in the IT industry), but other than receiving their emails still (although I haven't logged in in about a decade I guess!) I don't touch it. Used to have MSN and then Google+, mostly for the messaging, but rarely touch the latter and Microsoft killed the former when it took over (and destroyed) Skype. Here in Thailand Line is very popular - but it mostly mobile orientated and my fingers are not made for tiny and/or onscreen keyboards (miss my Blackberry Bold). I have several email accounts I use - work ones (for writing or IT) and personal ones, but only check now and again (people tend to Skype me to tell me they have sent me an email ). I am starved for English conversation here - I don't want to live on a bar stool, so I tend to frequent forums like this one (new to me ) and chat/debate/help - I'm even a mod on a few.
My kids told me to try out Twitter, because I have regularly used Facebook just to stay in contact with most of my family, and some old friends. I never liked get those game invitations from my grandchildren, it's so annoying! But Twitter seems a little more better than Facebook because it's specific text posts, and not a plethora of spam posts like Candy Crush Saga, or Farmville. I usually block all gaming invites from people.
I get most of those game invites from my mother - she's in her late 70s and loves those detective games on Facebook - they give clues every time you send an invite - so she send me several a day sometimes!
I actually have had a thorough look at Google+ and I think that the interface is really good, and very easy on the eyes for me. I would've loved to use it, but I can't just click on my family's info and just transfer their membership from Facebook to Google+ just like that. None of them use gmail, let alone Google+.
The only people I know who are using Google+ are those who are hoping to gain an advantage in the Google SERPs from it. I doubt that very many real people are there.
I hate getting the game invitations, too. There seems to be at least a couple of ways of dealing with that. One is to block each game as someone sends you a request to play it. That stops anyone else from sending you the request for that same game. But each time a new game comes out, you have to go through the blocking procedure for that game, too. Plus, it does not stop you from getting all of those horrible status updates telling you that someone just won 500 points playing Candy Cane, or whatever game it is. What you can do to stop that is to go to the post, click the top right corner where there is a little grey checkmark. Once ou do that , it will give you several choices. One of those choices is to "unfollow" XXX. if you unfollow that person, then you do not get any of their posts at all; but you can look on your friend list and go to their page and see what news they have. If somone does not clutter up their FB page with junk, then I leave it be; but when I get unwanted jokes, recipes, and shares that tell me I "will have 100 years bad luck if i don't share to 50 people in 10 seconds", then I unfollow them and stop all of the junk-mail.