I'm really in a pickle lately when it comes to Social Media. Let me break it down:
Facebook: I hate Facebook with a passion. I recently deleted my account. I had to remake it though, as it's the best way for me to keep in touch with my local salsa scene, of which I am a very active participant. I use my new facebook exclusively for networking with salsa people, which I much prefer to using it as a general networking tool. However, while narrowing my use case for Facebook has made it much more functional for me, I also find myself yearning for an avenue to share the more general stuff I used to share on there. I won't return to using Facebook as a general social media platform though, I refuse to provide content to a platform that is predatory to its users' privacy.
Google+: Google+ really
could be cool and useful. It's only real shortcomings are the lack of an active user base, poor visual design, and the lack of a groups feature. I'm lucky to have quite a few active friends on there, but nothing close to the kind of audience I would like to be able to reach. Also, since my Google+ profile is tied to my real name and primary email, I have to filter what I share on there, and don't really do any public sharing. That's no fun.
Twitter: I use twitter, and I really enjoy it, but I have to confess that I am a pretty passive user. I don't like sharing links because I use it on my phone. Phone browsers are just not up to the challenge of handling the real Web. So, Twitter is just a very casual and passive channel for me, it's not something that I take very seriously.
This Blog: Obviously I don't update this blog very often, and obviously it doesn't really have a following. I doubt anyone will even read this post. I use this basically to just write up articles on software/internet subjects that interest me. It's more a notebook for my own thoughts than a channel through which to reach an audience.
So what would I like to accomplish with social media? There's basically three subjects that I am interested in sharing about:
Software/Internet Things: The idea behind this blog was to have a place to rant about Linux, Internet freedom, and any other software or technology subject that I wanted. I think this blog mostly fails because I don't update it. If I were to write on it more consistently, and promote it to audiences that would have an interest in it, I might be more successful with it. Hmm.
Electronic Music: I'd really like to have a place to share sweet dubstep/drum & bass tracks that I find. I used to do this by posting to Facebook and Google+, but that audience is limited to the people who are friends with me. I don't want to publically post music on Google+, because some of the stuff I listen to I don't necessarily want associated with my name in search. Not because it's bad or incriminating, just because there's a ton of people out there who don't understand electronic music and artistic expression, and they might make false assumptions about me based on my taste. I don't really know what the best solution for this is. I've thought about setting up a Wordpress blog, so I can just post whatever I like, but I'm not 100% sure that's the most effective thing to do. I'd love to hear any suggestions anyone has on this subject.
Salsa: I'm a very active salsa dancer. As has been previously stated, most of my salsa social media needs are satisfied through Facebook. I guess this is a Good Enough solution, it's just dissatisfying that I have to resort to a platform that I absolutely hate in order to communicate with the people that I want to. Ho hum.
So there's my story. Just some musings for now. Maybe writing this all out will inspire some idea in my head, or maybe I'll just be stuck in the same spot months from now. We'll see!
