Social Platform Fatigue
July 25, 2011 8 Comments
In the summer, as we try to get a tan without burning, we think about SPF ratings for sunscreen.
Right now, after the introduction of Google+, I’m thinking that the SPF (Social Platform Fatigue) rating has just gone up considerably.
Uber-geeks may be able to keep up with sharing and interacting on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, a favorite music or photo sharing service, and whatever else, but me? -I’m feeling tired.
It’s getting too complicated. I deeply value what social technology has brought about as far as business potential and personal interaction, but this fragmentation is becoming wearisome. Too many platforms, not enough time. I’m getting attention-burn.
The next big killer app is going to restore simplicity – or , I should say, bring about a whole new level of simple efficiency. It can’t come soon enough.
UPDATE: Ha! Right after publishing, I saw a tweet about Tom Fishburne‘s post: Social Fatigue. Funny!
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How about a Tweetdeck plug-in to bring G+ into our control panel. Or if you use Hootsuite. I think we need a unifying app that can post to all of them at once. Too bad Twitter bought Tweetdeck just a month before G+ came out.
I would agree… I get a brain freeze even thinking about heading into the Google Plus world. Maybe age is catching up with me…
Like all technologies, social networks are created, become popular and then become obsolete when newer, more useful networks are created or when they become overwhelmed with spam and stupid users, or when people just get tired of them. We saw this with MySpace and I think we might be seeing the beginning of the end for Facebook and Twitter. I know my interest in Twitter isn’t what it used to be, although I still enjoy it and use it a lot. But it’s sort of fallen into a pattern now.
I think there’s a significant entertainment element to social networks, which accounts for the boredom effect. Any entertainment content has to constantly freshen and reinvent itself or it becomes tiresome.
And certainly, the overload effect you cite is significant. Your post makes me realize that I only have a certain amount of attention span to give to social networks and it gets distributed over how many I’m participating in. So to be sure, Facebook is getting less attention now that I have G+, and when G+ adds an event-planning function integrated with Google Calendar, I could abandon FB altogether.
To me, the key thing about G+ is it’s spam resistance, although it comes at the expense of serendipity to some extent. But I still see new people commenting on posts from people in my circles. And if I find their post and profile interesting I might add them. This, coupled with the mute feature makes it possible to put a real lid on spam, at least for the moment.
SPF–I second that emotion.
I was just having this conversation with my assistant the other day. She and I were discussing where the focus was going to be for Wright Creativity, and how we wanted to spend our time networking. She posed the question of “how is it even possible to be on everything?” I told her, simply, it’s not. People that have profiles on every single social site that has gotten traction exist (in fact, I think I have almost all of them), however, those who are actually using them all? Nope. We all have to pick where the best results can come from…but I am definitely feeling overwhelmed too. I’d kind of be okay if the internet (the entire thing) went down for a day or two…
I hear you and agree. Tired is the word. Also, tired of all of the crystal ball reading predicting a future we can’t see. Who knows what comes next, which platform dominates or if we all fracture into mico-communities? The not-knowing makes us try to be everywhere at once in case we miss out. And that is a recipe for burn out.
I’m taking a rest and going to find out where my clients are hanging out these days. Then I’ll go from there : ).
Amen to that Steve. It has become a bit, well, stupid out there.
I am right there with you Steve, it is getting very wearisome indeed. Creating the right balance is more important than ever. Other than SPF hope you and the family are well.