Anti-Social Butterfly
I am on the web a lot as a web developer and I enjoy reading other technical blogs and forums. For a long time, I just stuck with posting on forums. Then Facebook hit the scene, but I was very hesitant to sign up after getting sick of MySpace and cancelling my account there. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to continue being an internet social butterfly.
I quit using MySpace because of the horrible layouts with black text on a purple background, glittery graphics, oh and teddy bears. It was overwhelming to me as a web developer to see that horror that people were allowed to post online. At least Facebook was clean, and people were limited to the basic layout, so at least you could find friends and read what they posted on their profiles. Now I have grown disgusted with it as well sharing my information, and people copy and pasting crap to save the world.
I still have my personal Facebook page, but don’t promote it or use it for business. I do however use Twitter more and seem to like its limited design, which keeps most users in check. I say most, as one thing that has become annoying with Twitter is the user’s poor attempts at marketing. I don’t care if you tweet about a new article on your blog, but these hidden links to landing pages are just spam as usual.
After thinking about it, I don’t think it’s as much the chosen social network, but the end user not understanding how to use it to benefit their business or service. You can really tell the ones that don’t have a clue about social marketing. Hell, I’m a web developer and don’t even attempt it other than to mention an update about my blog. At the moment, it doesn’t even have advertisements on it, so one can hardly accuse me of spamming just to get you to visit.
All in all, I think a lot of people should do some more research before attempting to promote their products and or services online. It’s really just giving people a negative opinion of them right from the start. Don’t be in such a hurry to promote a service or site that may arm someone’s computer. You really haven’t a clue what you’re getting paid to promote and a little common sense can go a long way.