Please hold the jokes. I do indeed have friends. I do I swear! My issue is that in amongst all of the great new social apps & sites, I can’t locate any of them.
It feels like there is a new social site everyday. There is literally a digital hangout for just about every thing you can do in your life. Want to share photos? Flickr, Instagram and Picasa. Want to share your every thought? Twitter. Your every thought…in more than 140 characters? Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr. How about your every move? Foursquare, Localmind and Banjo. What about everything you find interesting? Pinterest, reddit, digg and StumbleUpon. Intimate details of your daily schedule, whereabouts and activities? Path. Accomplishments, careers and accolades? LinkedIn. Every moment of your life caught on video? YouTube. Everything you watch on TV? GetGlue. And of course, all of the above? Facebook, Google+, and MySpace. That might seem like social overload….but that’s definitely not all of them!
I have accounts on 18/21 listed above…Hello, my name is Crystal Wiltshire and I have a social media problem…
 |
| What addiction looks like. |
While it is great to have variety, not all social sites are given the fair and equal chance.With the social global domination of Facebook (please lord Zukerberg, don’t smite me!), Google+ and Twitter, it is difficult for many other social media sites to really get a mainstream foothold. Either the social networks have little knowledge of their existence, or they feel that getting involved in too many sites is too much work.
It really is a shame, because some of these other sites and apps are incredible. Take for example, Path. It is a beautifully designed app with a clean user interface and genuinely fun experience. It terms of sheer look and ease of use, it definitely rivals Facebook….but nobody knows it’s there! I created my account, and out of all of Twitter and all of Facebook, I found one person I knew…and she’s a social junkie like me…love you Rachel! 
I would also really like to enjoy Foursquare…but I think I would have next to no one to compete with in my area…so I would be mayor of everywhere by default!
The fact that so many of these 2nd or 3rd generation social sites lack the sheer volume of Facebook, makes it very difficult to really get the full experience that the site or app has to offer.
So again, while it might be ideal to have variety, what good is a social site if there is no one there to be social with?
Path looks interesting – unfortunately it doesn’t look like it is supported on Blackberry – what a ~surprise~ which lets out me and most of my family.
Yes, that is a different problem all together. Some of the new social apps are only available on certain platforms. Path is only good for iPhone and Android, and Instagram, which is amazing, is only on the iPhone. Not only does this limit the availability, but it also makes it so that everything has to be done on the phone. I will never build out Path as a full profile because I’d have to do it all on the small screen and tiny touch keyboard of my phone. I don’t understand why they don’t at least have a web interface.
I’ve got the facebook, the twitter and my blogger account and that’s about all I can handle.. Signed up for Pinterest, don’t get it. Google+ don’t get it. A few of the other sites I’m on, like grooveshark and ultimate guitar have social interfaces but I don’t really use them.
I am mostly just lost on Google+ and I don’t really use some of the social features of the social bookmarking sites. I use them just to find cool articles
I actually forgot about music sites…I did just get SoundCloud. I haven’t really shared anything, but love Marlon’s updates!