People burning out on social sites?
Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 - 2:27am
Interesting article in the SF Chronicle on "social site fatigue". Anyone who's tried blogging / podcasting / participating in a social network site will recognize the pattern immediately. It's fun for a few months. But while novelty slowly melts away, the maintenance it requires doesn't. And the hobby turns into a chore.
Article wrote:
But even as the phenomenon continues to swell, the effort to maintain an active social life on the Web is taking its toll. Some have grown tired of what once was novel. Some feel bombarded by unsolicited messages, friend requests and advertisements. And some are cutting back.This suggests that as much as people want to connect through the Internet, the practice also can have the opposite effect: social networking fatigue.
New thing comes out
People love new thing
People get carried away with new thing
People get burned out on their excess of the new thing
People settle down into a more conservative usage pattern of new thing
New thing stops being something to write headlines about, but it's still there in regular, sane use
No need to come up with terms like "social site fatigue", it's no different than any other new thing.
Gaming / PC Tech Blog: www.blastprocessing.net
Xbox Live: Legion SB / PSN: Legion_SB / Steam: legion028 / Twitter: legion
tits || gtfo
The Legion Pattern is applicable to many aspects of The Legion Life, such as The Legion Avatar
ThePolypusher
WAR - Dolz
Oh yeah? Well just for that...
<----------
BAM! The legend is back!
Gaming / PC Tech Blog: www.blastprocessing.net
Xbox Live: Legion SB / PSN: Legion_SB / Steam: legion028 / Twitter: legion
tits || gtfo
This isn't a problem here at GWJ. Come for the mature gaming analysis and intelligent discussion. Stay for the boobies. Or, at least the chance to shout the word boobies at any opportune or quasi-opportune time.
Legion's 6 step process definitely applies, although I think it's also due to more and more people realizing that, all teasing aside, you cannot and never will "Win teh internet." There's always more to say and someone else to come along and take your place or your perceived place in the virtual world.
Rat Boy on Newlywed Ackbar wrote:
So what's the next major social networking site going to be? Friendscape? MyJournal? MaudlinBanalWhineSpot?
Quote:
XBL Tag: Prederick
FirePatHill.com
Gaming / PC Tech Blog: www.blastprocessing.net
Xbox Live: Legion SB / PSN: Legion_SB / Steam: legion028 / Twitter: legion
tits || gtfo
soyouhavenorealsociallife.com
Love thyself (just not in public)
Love thy neighbour (remember to ask first)
Certis wrote:
New thing gets taken over by Brazillian drug cartels (Orkut).
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
I wonder when WoW will get to the 4th state. There are already some getting out because of the burns, but by no means any great portion of users. And I wonder if the burning crusade will turn WoW into a point 1 thing all over again.
I don't watch, I interact!
LeBatard?
"Men like sex, thus boobies! Oogaba!" - dejanzie
"If ads put your sanity to the test
come on down to Rat Boy's nest!
light up a stogie, and soon you'll see
how rock can be commercial-free!
'I'd hit it!'" - HP Lovesauce
Dammit, I haven't participated at all in this whole myspace thing and now already it's passe. I guess I'll have to stick with the barbecue test. If you're not close enough to my house to come to a barbecue, we're really not socially connected.
I like to think of MySpace as forums for the mentally challenged....
I'm sure a new fad will emerge soon
"In general forums are forum's for the mentally challenged."
I like to think of such generalizations as unnecessary.
And if I haven't seen further, it's because those bloody giants blocked my sight.
Sense of humor much?
Seriously, If you want to prattle on with your "friends" on a poorly designed website, so be it.
"In general forums are forum's for the mentally challenged."
Excellent. I'm glad I finally have your permission, it was tearing this family apart. But you're still not getting the dowry back.
Sometimes I wish my friends would agree on one "social" site that we could all go with, so in that manner it's a lot like the whole AIM vs. ICQ thing years ago, but much worse. Other than that I think they serve their purpose very well. I've lived in three different states over the past three years, and without MySpace, I probably would have lost touch with a few of them. Blogs are an easy way of keeping up with what's going on in your friends' lives, and while some of them take it too far (I had breakfast today! Again!) most people I know only post semi-significant events or amusing trains of thought that you might not hear about otherwise. Some of them I wish would post more.
Meeting new people on any of them is mostly a recipe for failure, but I've made a few close friends over livejournal and myspace (and now facebook), and while my attempts far outnumber my successes, I wouldn't say it wasn't worth the effort to be brought into contact with someone you are glad to have met. MySpace definitely isn't pretty, and it's full of phony people, perverts, and idiots, but so is the real world. And at least this way, I can just click "delete".
"YOU SPOIL, YOU GET SPOILED! AAAAHAHAHAHAHA!"
All the cool people still hang out in IRC.
-Bad Mojo
And man that dog looks like he's having a good time, but that monkey is f*cking into it. This isn't his recreation; this is his life and he knows it in a way I will never know anything. --Danjo Olivaw
I tend to agree. There are exceptions to every rule, but just load a random MySpace page and you'll be bombarded with 50Cent lyrics and purple-on-dark-purple text with 5 spelling mistakes in 4-letter words... which. coincidentally, are just shortened versions of longer words that the user has no brain capability to type out.
Shelter: coming 2137
In general forums are forum's for the mentally challenged.
If you set up a system in which everyone is given a voice, a great many of them are not going to know what to do with it. Remember the heyday of Geocities and Tripod? How many horribly garish animated gif laden web pages did their best to burn out your retinas?
A forum's asshat to reasonable person ratio has increasingly become just a product of how large that community has grown. There are only two message boards I've stuck with for any length of time during all my journey through the mad crazy internets, and GWJ is one of them, so what does that say about forums in general? Should you write off the usefulness of "the forum" concept, GWJ included, simply because if you load up any number of them, gamespot, penny-arcade, and the vile intellectual abyss that the comment areas of kotaku and joystiq collectively form you will be greeted with a truckload of idiots incapable of even the most rudimentary attempts at grammar, punctuation, or coherent trains of thought?
Social networking sites have their uses, even if you have to look hard and close to find them.
"YOU SPOIL, YOU GET SPOILED! AAAAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Nice. I'm taking it. You can keep the dowry...except for the goat. I want that back.
"In general forums are forum's for the mentally challenged."
Alternately, no cool person has ever hung out on IRC.
Gaming / PC Tech Blog: www.blastprocessing.net
Xbox Live: Legion SB / PSN: Legion_SB / Steam: legion028 / Twitter: legion
tits || gtfo
I haven't ever really totally gotten into the social site thing - don't have a MySpace page or a personal blog. Though I've tried in the past, the upkeep is significant, and the need to verbally spew all of my ramblings, trials, tribulations, relationship problems, anger issues, political beefs, and hang-ups has lessened through the years. Don't get me wrong - I'm happy to read the blogs of others - but I'll keep my personal life to myself (and my 'real life' friends) for now. I do sometimes bridge the gap and meetup with some online friends in person. But those are exceptions.
More importantly, however, is that my online persona is more and more closely tied to my professional persona, since I'm working in the games industry and most of the sites I frequent are related. As such, I try to keep my online doings on-topic, and not something that I may someday be ashamed to have an employer stumble across. This, again, is an exception to what the vast majority of folks are doing, but something that is important to me at this point in my life.
Even though I only update my personal (which is actually my professional) site once a month or so, everything that goes there is something I'm proud of, or at least something that reflects who I want to be professionally.
In the rare case that I do participate in something more social, such as political discussions, or non-gaming-related forums, I do so under a different moniker, just in case I make a bad judgement call.
I recently signed up for facebook since my sister-in-law is on there and it's just a cleaner version of MySpace. I don't get the whole thing, it's like blogging - which I do but I do it for the express purpose that I know no-one's reading it. But there are bloggers and more importantly groups of bloggers who feel the need to comment or post on your blog and then expect you to turn around and do the same to them. I didn't join a clique in high school and I'm sure as hell not going to join one now that I'm in my 30's.
MySpace for all of it's popularity was designed for the web feeble, it looks like geocities crossed with some retarded blog software and somehow it took off. Well McDonald's took off too I suppose.
Geocities was once all the rage too and now it's tough to find someone that actually hosts something on it. In 5 years these sites will be the same.
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
My girlfriend is a paying member of livejournal. She had a party with 60 people, the majority of whom were from livejournal. Some came from afar as arizona, and california to her birthday here in alabama. It blew my mind!
I think they'll be around. I think only the close knit groups will keep it around.
I can't help but snicker at this, and not because it's funny on its own.
If I didn't drink, Crom would laugh and cast me out of Valhalla when I die. Peer pressure I can handle, but not when it comes from Crom. -Lobo