So I’ve decided that I waste time on Facebook. Mind you, not exactly in the same sense that some people seem to spend time on the site. See, I used to keep this blog regularly updated. Ok, well, I used to update anyway, maybe it’s been a long time since I was doing so regularly. Maybe what I mean is I waste energy on Facebook.
About a week ago I realized I’ve been using Facebook (and to a lesser extent Twitter) to express ideas and opinions and anecdotes which I would have formerly written a blog entry about. To make things worse, I write less about these stories there than I would on my blog. And to top it all off, they are then only available to people on Facebook, and if Facebook someday disappeared, those thoughts and ideas would disappear as well.
So I think I’ve decided that I should stop posting so much on Facebook. I want to switch back to writing on my blog, owned, operated, and maintained by me for me. As a side bonus, this means posting less stuff on Facebook that people probably don’t want to read anyway (probably the only person who would ever call having fewer people read something a bonus). I think I’ll take the approach that some do, which is to write the blog entry, and then occasionally re-post it on Facebook/Twitter as a link. I think perhaps that leads to a better use of those networks anyway.
I should mention, though, that I don’t think social networks are Evil or Pointless. And I do think they can be a good source for spreading the word on current events, or keeping up to date with the news. And obviously, the social aspects of them are useful. I just don’t like the idea of “content” that I generate winding up stuck there, and I think their format in general discourages long, thought-out writing.
I guess you could sum the idea up as: Put less creative energy into social networks, and leave them for socializing.
