My social media survey

Been thinking more abstractly about social media lately, so it seems worth it to get more concrete and talk out more of my own personal reality with it across various social media accounts. Not considering blogs social media though technically they are. For me my blogs are more the stable zone. They're the base around which I do other things.

Maybe my least used account is my belated MySpace one, which I checked recently, because I think they emailed me or something. And haven't found myself going back, so I'm not sure if they fixed what I think was the biggest reason Facebook beat them, as in my opinion, it was JUST the stream.

To me the stream is the most important thing to consider across any social media account.

And the stream is the flow of updates, like on Twitter is the line of tweets, or updates on Facebook, or photos in Instagram. The biggest social media that doesn't have a conventional stream for me is Pinterest, but they do have a stream. It's not conventional in that Pinterest gives you a two-dimensional view of new pins.

Why is the stream so important? Novelty.

Here's a tweet I made which shows you what I think of novelty.

Hollywood ultimately is just a novelty business.
— James Harris (@jstevh) September 4, 2010

You take away the novelty and you lose that thing that keeps people constantly checking the social media accounts, just to see if there's something new. Which is probably why I'm going to check my Facebook accounts several more times today. Without that stream of updates, you lose that novelty.

My Twitter stream is my most addictive one. Probably check it hundreds of times a day at times, so sometimes have to schedule breaks from it.

On Google+ was frustrated scrolling down through their stream as it's too detailed. They seem to be cutting off the stream at some point now, which actually helps. I kind of wish they'd let you have a digest version.

Oh yeah, the digest version is anyway you can scrunch down the data in the stream to make it more accessible so you can scan rapidly through it. On Google+ I get bogged down. There's so much rich content that I reflexively ignore some, like videos, refusing to click on them, unless they're really enticing. That's not a good thing.

Have talked about my most used already, where things are least public on Facebook and Instagram in that on Facebook I deleted my public profile on me as I got frustrated trying to figure out what to put on it--and now it's back, just kind of random. And haven't posted to my Instagram in a long time though I get on it every day, to do Likes! I like, liking on Instagram, maybe more than anywhere else, so it's more of a follow experience.

Created a new public profile on Facebook for my math ideas, and it has one Like, mine.

Facebook is an arena of frustration for me.

Only social media area worse? YouTube.

Have some practice videos on YouTube so really don't care, but it's as bad as Facebook, where can go for long periods where I get no Likes on Facebook for things, on YouTube can get zero views. But I am pondering why. Guess technique has something to do with it, along with other things.

My social media presence can be puzzling where more web analytics has helped me out a lot, so I will admit that my most dominate account in terms of views and apparent influence is my Twitter account, followed by my Google+ account, where you can see views now, followed by my Pinterest account.

And I will admit my Pinterest account gets a bit over 800 views per month, so not talking big numbers, but better than public on Facebook or YouTube, by like, infinity.

I'm spending more time trying to figure out Pinterest than anything else, as I think the potential is greatest.

Why not put up links to all these in this post? Why bother? I'm talking things out.

And those are the social media accounts most worth discussing where I have others, where so far there is far less activity or it's more experimental.

Biggest point I think? The stream is the thing.

What pulls people to constantly check, and check, to see if something interesting happened?

The stream.

And by far for me the biggest thrills come on Twitter where things can just get, well completely wild.

Oh yeah, so didn't talk follower counts at all. Well, mostly I don't worry about followers. Not surprisingly that doesn't help to get a lot of them. On Twitter have 120 at time of this post. Don't disclose Google+ follow numbers. On Pinterest have 4.

Yeah, I don't worry about followers which is good as I don't have bragging rights there. Hardly worth mentioning the numbers, eh?


James Harris