1 #+date: 2018-01-08 21:04:09 +0800
2 #+filetags: social_media blogging meta_thinking open_web
3 #+title: On social media
5 Dries Buytaert [[https://dri.es/more-blogging-and-less-social-media][wrote last week]]
6 about intending to use social media less in 2018. As an entrepreneur
7 developing a CMS, he has a vested interest in preventing the world
8 moving to see the internet as being either Facebook, Instagram or
9 Twitter (or reversing that current-state maybe). Still, I believe he is
10 genuinely concerned about the effect of using social media on our
11 thinking. This partly because I share the observation. Despite having
12 been an early adopter, I disabled my Facebook account a year or two ago
13 already. I'm currently in doubt whether I should not do the same with
14 Twitter. I notice it actually is not as good a source of news as classic
15 news sites - headlines simply get repeated numerous times when major
16 events happen, and other news is equally easily noticed browsing a
17 traditional website. Fringe and mainstream thinkers alike in the space
18 of [[http://tompeters.com/][management]],
19 [[http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/][R]]
20 [[http://www.brodrigues.co/][stats]],
21 [[https://www.olimex.com/][computing hardware]] etc are a different
22 matter. While, as Dries notices, their micro-messages are typically not
23 well worked out, they do make me aware of what they have blogged about -
24 for those that actually still blog. So is it a matter of trying to
25 increase my Nexcloud newsreader use, maybe during dedicated reading
26 time, and no longer opening the Twitter homepage on my phone at random
27 times throughout the day, and conceding short statements without a more
28 worked out bit of content behind it are not all that useful?
30 The above focuses on consuming content of others. To foster
31 conversations, which arguably is the intent of social media too, we
32 might need something like
33 [[https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/][webmentions]] to pick up steam too.