stay disconnected

This Monday I talked about the Social Media Landscape. In there I mentioned in half sentence that "Most of the Media Sharing Platforms allow similar techniques [as Social Networks] by now but it isn't their main purpose." without explaining myself. What I meant with this are all the ways to follow the updates other do on their accounts. For example you can "subscribe" to a users on flickr and youtube. When ever said user is now uploading new content you'll be informed about this. This allows you to stay connected.

Well, kinda. If you are a member of as many platforms as I am (I counted almost 20 I was able to remember by hard a few month ago, since then it grew) you are not logged into each one permanently, checking or updates all the time. This is why so many of the Media Sharing Platforms allow the users to connect with Facebook or Twitter nowadays. And on first sight that sounds like the long wanted feature we were all missing: connect everything with everything and everyone and all the time.



But after you logged into the third network that day to accept an invitation of someone (as there are still quiet features unconnected) to read the very same tweets you read already twice you get really annoyed: it ain't adding any value. On most networks I am connected to a similar group of people. Only very few are only present on one network only. But in this case my twitter messages have no value for them, otherwise they could just follow me on twitter. Connecting Xing and Twitter doesn't add any value.

And the same is true for the other way round. YouTube allows you to connect your twitter account. Only few now what that actually means: Almost everything you do on YouTube (upload a video yourself or favourite one) is tweeted by default. As this is going automatic you the messages are very useless: "I favourited a video on youtube: youtubelink". This doesn't add any value for the reader.

It. Just. Increases. The. Noise. 

If you have something interesting to say (what might be the reason why you favourited this video), tell me about it. I am glad to read"Dr. Oizos newest video is just amazing: youtubelink". Before I had to click the link I am able to rate the value for me. Although the favourited video is the same I won't know before clicking the link and the reason why you favourited stays in the dark. Maybe it is cooking video you want to show your mom later. I don't know.

And if you do this a lot I am more likely to ignore what you write. I am not able to see any value for me in your tweets. Actually this is the reason why I stopped following quiet some people. Their automatic qik-tweets, retweet-bots and redire.ct statistics just increased the noise and I wasn't able to find the content that actually mattered anylonger. I call this spam.

So please, for the sake good behaviour, stay disconnected. Only write those things that actually matter for said network. And with network I mean the people reading your messages. No one on LinkedIn cares about your newest private blog post! Only write messages that matter to people otherwise they will stop listening.