Recently, I have been cajoled, harassed, and embarrassed into participating in the “Social Networking” craze. I have a MySpace page. I’m on Facebook. I am participating in Plaxo, Linkedin, and Twitter. Putting aside the time I should have spent to set up my “page” on each of these sites (the bare minimum to participate is what I opted for), the question now is, how do I find the time every day to visit each of these social networks and actively participate in the things they have to offer?
At this point in time I am only visiting these sites in the evening, after work. I find that once engaged, I can be going from site to site for hours. These sites are addicting and time consuming. Which brings me to a few other questions: 1. Does a person have to be on all these different sites to stay connected or is one better than the rest? 2. What value do these sites really add to my already-too-busy life?
From a time management perspective I think the best way to handle these sites is to send your status updates when it doesn’t interfere with real work that you are getting paid to do. I sent one the other day while sitting in a parking lot waiting for a funeral procession to go by. As for “browsing” the site to see what other people are up too, all I can offer is that you set aside a specific amount of time to do this. Once that time is up, STOP. Otherwise, these sites can be very addicting and you won’t be able to get anything else done.
Please leave a comment on your experience with these social networking sites so we can all learn from your experiences.