I saw something earlier today that made me pause and think. Leo Laporte, Technology Journalist and Radio host, had a minor epiphany about using Twitter or other Microblogging platforms. He was was posting for a week or so when he noticed that none of the things he was posting had been showing up online. Which made him question why he used those services:
I should have been posting it here all along. Had I been doing so I’d have something to show for it. A record of my life for the last few years at the very least. But I ignored my blog and ran off with the sexy, shiny microblogs. Well no more.
via Buzz Kill : LOL: The Life of Leo.
I share links and interesting things I find via Twitter and Facebook, but I realized that those are also just being sent out into the noise. One of the reasons I am posting here is because I was interested in having a record of my thoughts and interesting things I have found on the web. I make sure to share my family photos here, because I don’t want them to be lost by some company. I am going to redouble my efforts to share things here first.
fb, twitter and the like do that. They are shiny objects to distract from real substance. Because of how disposable they are, I find they ebb and flow in terms of content from people I know. Most of my fb is now taken up fan pages I’ve liked, such as Media Matters, The Daily Show and the Onion. Oh and Reverend Horton Heat, they can be depended on for generating a ton of updates.
There was a time when fb was like a constant ongoing conversation with people I knew, all at once. Now, not so much as the site is leveraged for advertising in one way or another.
So, long story short, I tend to agree with your notion.