Knowing when to quit
I’m breaking from a few months of silence on my blog to set my cannon sights on a few Social Media services and blasting them. Specifically, Gowalla, MySpace, and LinkedIn.
I simply do not use these services any more. Although I’m not necessarily planning to completely delete the accounts, I am removing external links that point to my profiles, starting with the links column right here on this blog.
Gowalla—I had been on the fence about this one for a long while anyway. Collecting items (as stupid as that was) pretty much was its only fun feature, and that’s gone. Version 4.0 is weird and I simply don’t like it. I only connected to 14 people (a fraction of the number to whom I’m connected on Foursquare). With only a single exception, none of those have checked in for at least four months—when Gowalla 4.0 debuted. Some of those people haven’t checked in for more than two years! And to top it all off, I just discovered that Facebook acquired Gowalla and the service is completely shutting down.
MySpace—do I really need to say anything here?
LinkedIn—I’ve determined that I completely missed the point of LinkedIn from the start. I created my profile to treat it as something of an online professional reference for people with whom I wish to interact. Ergo, I only connected to people I already knew who probably already had most of the information on my profile, anyway. I’ve never had a wish to use it to branch out and make connections beyond those I know. I don’t want a bunch of unknowns having access to my detailed work history. But that appears to be what LinkedIn is for—making those connections either for business deals or job searches. I’m interested in neither, so I’m putting LinkedIn on hiatus. It is probably the only service that I’ll ultimately/literally delete the account.
Google+ is on probation. I’m not ready to blast it yet, but it’s close. It needs a full API for third-party developers NOW. It also needs a mobile app that does more than the miniscule subset of Google+ features—especially ability to share links and access/update business pages. My social media blasting cannon will make preparations to target this service soon if something doesn’t change even sooner.