Only a Game

Social Media Crisis

Actually, 'crisis' is too strong... 'pickle' may be more appropriate. I now have too much coming into my social media funnel and I don't have time to wrangle it all. Something has to go, but what to cut?

Google+ is developing into a rather satisfying forum for conversations, being more integrated and communal than the more insular blog comment discussions, and Twitter is serving me well as a global MUD chatroom where I can mouth-off with feedback and practice what I find most challenging: writing tersely. LinkedIn handles my professional networking excellently, without being too intrusive.

Elsewhere, my blogs remain central to my internet life, but have ceased to be daily activities, becoming instead a private weekly magazine for drafting segments of future books, papers and so forth. The possibility of worthwhile discussion of the points raised whenever I manage to capture someone's interest makes this activity so much more rewarding than other channels, although it's now confusing when I cross-post a blog link in Google+ because it bifurcates discussions. My blogging habits are a long way from the usual concept of a 'web-log', anyway: I have posts scheduled here on Only a Game for a month or more in advance these days. Long gone are the lengthy morning scribbles: Twitter has eaten this time. (Well, Twitter and my one-year old son!)

Matt Mower, a good friend who pushed me off a cliff into blogging and later counselled me on my fall into the chasm that is Twitter, warned me that blogs would suffer if I began tweeting and he was partly right. My own blogs are much as they were, and what's really suffering has been other people's blogs. It's not lack of interest, but lack of time. Every time I go to Google Reader these days there's 500-1,000 posts waiting to be read, and I end up marking all as read blindly. I know good stuff is slipping me by, but the temptation to rely on Google+ to aggregate what's of interest becomes ever-stronger, even though it cannot really rise to this challenge. Culling the feeds would ease the pressure, but at great cost to the diversity of perspectives.

I'm uncertain what I can do, or indeed if there's anything I can do. Is anyone else finding themselves in a similar situation? What do you do when the demands on your attention outstrip the supply of time?

Cross-posted from a Google+ post - which says a lot about my new social media habits.

Erelong Commencing

Back from the States, and with a stack of pieces on ethics and a few related topics to queue-up for the weeks to come, including Vikings vs. Murderers and The Ultimate Moral Computer. Hope you'll find something intriguing in the subjects I've chosen to explore, and I look forward to discussing these and other matters with you in the comments.