Can We Talk About Social Media?
I'm just going to come right out and say it: I'm back on Facebook (sort of).
If you've been following along with my journey long enough, you know I dumped the platform a few years back (before I switched over to this site!) and didn't regret the decision one bit. You may have also noticed that my love for Instagram only grew stronger.
Then, last month (after talking with Elise about opting out of Facebook business pages), I realized just how many real life family and friends still used Facebook—and only Facebook, for the most part—to connect. I was missing them. Additionally, the groups in which I was participating were using Facebook groups to plan events and support one another. Because I had my old phantom account (it's ridiculously hard to delete the Facebook—let it be known that deactivating and deleting are two different beasts), I had been participating in these groups in a more peripheral sense. I was skirting around the connectivity that Facebook is known for, which meant I wasn't fully participating at all.
Cue the sad trombone.
So, I decided to start a new account—a personal one—that is reserved for family, friends and people I've truly connected with over the last many, many months. I'm being 100% intentional with the account, which means I won't be connecting with people I only know online (come say hi on Twitter or Instagram!) or business contacts I don't see or hear from regularly (we're all on LinkedIn, yes?). I also have no desire to start a business page. Let's just all agree how useless those have become—especially if you're just now jumping into the game.
So how's it going so far? Connecting only with those people I actually know and socialize with regularly has been delightful. Note that I never would have imagined using that word to describe Facebook. For the last two years, I've been using a host of very pointed words, accompanied by less-than-positive body language when the platform would come up in conversation. Yet, I think I may have found the key to using it without the noise I so desperately wanted to leave behind in 2012.
I have to mention that Facebook is not the place it once was. It feels like people are using it less and less to share their daily business and I like that. I hope someday it will just fade into the background completely and something better will take its place. Until then, however, I'm glad to have reconnected in the space with those I know and love.
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So tell me friends: are you using Facebook for personal and/or business purposes? How do you feel about the platform these days?