Raise your hand if you have been experiencing the following:
- You find it laborious to accept invites from “friends.”
- You’re no longer excited about “biting chumps” and getting a drink from your connections
- You realize you don’t know half of your social network.
- You feel compelled to tag email invites as spam.
- You cringe of the thought that someone sent you an invite from a new social networking site.
You may be suffering from Social Network Fatigue. Folks from Slashdot predicted this phenomenon exactly one year ago this and I think I’m experiencing symptoms of that Social Network Fatigue Syndrome. Yeah, I know, this is not how you want to start a new year, but I can’t help but feel negative about certain social networks.
Hypothetically, the bigger your social network, the more you should feel connected or linked. So it follows that to get a bigger network, you should join more social networking sites. However, I haven’t really felt more “connected” since accepting some of the newer networking sites out there. (The biggest culprits have been the “professional” social networks.) To make matters worse, the site of choice of my real world friends, Friendster, has gone stale to the point that I have not added new connections in the last few months. (Remember that Friendster adding spree, circa 2003-2004?)
So I have decided to limit my active virtual networking life sites I think are worth my while:
- Friendster (yes, I am still optimistic)
- Facebook (the open-endedness of features is appealing) and
- LinkedIn (all my professional networking will now be limited to this site)
Sheesh, it’s really hard when fatigue, in any form, sets in.
