2011 marked a big change for myself in regards to my online presence and social interaction. After years of locking down my Facebook account to friends only and largely ignoring Twitter; the introduction of Google+ and inspired by people like Jeff Jarvis and Tom Anderson I expanded my social experiences. I started this blog, completely opened my Facebook for public viewing, started my Twitter account and engaged with other Perth people in Google+.
After taking a nice break during the Christmas/New Year period, I’ve had a rethink of my ‘everything will be public’ policy and social habits and set myself some goals for this year that I hope to accomplish.
#1 – Scale back the public nature of my Facebook account
Now this isn’t a reversal of my opinion of the benefits of being public online that I wrote about in my first post, however I discovered that being public on Facebook is not beneficial for the way I use it. Basically, I don’t engage on Facebook much. I don’t make many posts, I don’t like pages or comment on brands, I barely comment on my friends posts. Mainly I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends I can’t catch up with often enough.
So while I won’t go back to hiding my Facebook profile from searches and blocking people, my posts will go back to being only accessible to friends.
#2 – Use Google+ for comments on my blog posts
For those of you (2 maybe 3 people) who read my blog, you may have noticed that I have now disabled comments in my posts. This is because a) there weren’t many comments and b) there were generally more comments were in Google+ that were linked to my blog post. So for each new blog post I have, I will add a link to the Google+ post so you can add comments if you wish.
#3 – Engage in Twitter more
I’m having a great time meeting new people and getting involved in great discussions through the Google+ Perth circle, however I feel like there is a great Twitter community that I’m missing out on since I don’t engage in there nearly as much.
A lot of this is due to the 140 character limit on Twitter which I find too restricting, and I also find Twitter not that well designed for conversation with it’s @ reply system compared to the comments system on Facebook and Google+.
I hope to post and engage more in Twitter over the next year to expand my social experience.
#4 – Make a review video and post it to YouTube
This is one of those things I have wanted to do for ages but there has always been one thing stopping me…fear! My friends will tell you that I suffer from a fear of public speaking, which also effects me when I’m talking on video.
However, I find talking about tech and other subjects much more easier than writing them down. A lot of times I’ve had an idea for a blog post but by the time I have the opportunity to write it down, I have trouble getting thoughts from the brain to the screen. I hope I can build my video skills to be able to make at least one video review this year.
So these are my social resolutions for 2012, are you planning anything similar for your social life or are you just taking everything in your stride as it comes?
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