Two weeks ago today I decided to quit all social media for a short time. All the controversy around Facebook got me thinking about what the value of social media was to me – if there were any at all. I wondered if I had been wasting a ton of time or if after my short time away if I would come back with a sense of real perceived value. I made some predictions and some came true, others did not – but for reasons I hadn’t expected. Here’s what I’ve learned:

Twitter: Two weeks ago I predicted that I would come back to Twitter since I had been using it a lot for a business reasons. My prediction was correct -sort of. I will for sure be active with Twitter again, but not just because I use it a little for business reasons. What I found was that my actual use of Twitter was more like a giant news aggregator that was custom designed by me – on accident. All the people and businesses I have followed over the past 3 years are always reporting things that I’m interested in. It’s like having a news site that only talks about the things you want to hear. Over three years I had followed and un-followed people, constantly creating a more customized stream of information that I could dive into at any time. During the past 2 weeks I have felt out of the loop. I felt like I was missing out on all the regular information and updates that I was so used to having at my disposal.

Additionally, news aggregator reasons aside, I also made quite a few friends and I found myself wondering what they were up to. The last week I have been counting down the days until I could get back in and catch up with everyone. So, ultimately, my return to Twitter is almost completely unrelated to the little bit I use it for work. I’m back because I enjoy the little bit of social activity from it and I have found a very real value in the information provided.

Foursquare: I predicted I would finish the 2 weeks, have no desire to use the service any more and would then delete the app from my phone. I was partially correct. Almost immediately, I lost any desire to use the Foursquare app. Going into restaurants that I had “checked-in” many times before, I had no urge to pull out the phone and announce to the world that I was there. None. That feeling never changed over the 2 weeks. The one time I thought about using the app was while I was out of town and was searching for a restaurant in the area – but there are tons of apps out there that do that besides Foursquare.

So while it would seem that I’m finished using Foursquare, I’m not going to delete it from my phone. Location based services are starting to get a lot of attention and I think something cool is going to come out of it all. I don’t know what it will be but I want to hold on to the app so that I’ll have a first-hand view of new changes. Plus, if bars and restaurants really start getting involved, it might be nice to get a free appetizer or something just for showing that you checked-in. So, I think I’ve finished being a regular user and will only be a casual observer or at best, an opportunistic user when there’s free food or drink specials involved.

Facebook: At the start of this experiment I wasn’t sure what to predict. I was mostly sure that I would end up deleting my account. I thought that there was really very little “social” to it – just a lot of one sided profile creeping. Like others, I also had concerns about all the privacy changes and where my data was being sent. To be honest, I’m still a little conflicted on what to do with Facebook. I really want to see where things go with it because it’s become such a huge part of the internet, but at the same time, I don’t want personal info shared with the whole world. I do recognize that there is a very social side with Facebook where you can catch up with friends and family, however I still think the most common purpose it serves is to fuel rumors and gossip as a product of one-sided profile creeping.

I have decided I’m going to continue forward with my Facebook account open but I’m going to lock down the permissions and remove a lot of information and pictures. Even if it’s harmless info, I’d rather share that by choice on my blog than with advertisers that don’t have to ask my permission and can do whatever they want with it. By keeping my account I’ll be able to do my own damage control (asking people to remove or untag pictures or videos that I wouldn’t want shared), I’ll be able to have an inside view of where the new “hub of the internet” is taking us all and I’ll still be able to connect with friends and family if I want to. I think I’ll be happy with this.

What I’ve learned from this 2 week break is that social media is what you make it. For some, they enjoy Facebook for few other reasons than snooping through an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend’s profile to see what they’re up to or gossiping about what a friend posted about their activities one night. If that’s you, that’s fine. I understand it’s just another form of entertainment and I have no issues with it. Others enjoy it because they’re able to connect with childhood friends, bring extended family together and keep relationships alive through simple wall to wall messages and picture sharing. Still, others are using it only for advertising purposes for their business. All of that is ok because ultimately, like I found with Twitter, and like most everything in life, all these different social applications can be enjoyable and useful, but only if you make them that way for yourself.

No one has to share any more data than they want on the internet. No one has to expand their friend network any larger than they want to. And, everyone has the ability to customize their use of the “social” side of the internet however it is most useful and/or entertaining for themselves. Here’s my favorite way to use it: http://twitter.com/mwilbanks.

There were also times where I found an actual use for the Foursquare app that I was previously sure I was finished with. Many times on the trip it would have been helpful to open up the app and figure out what restaurants were around and what people thought about them. I had no desire at all to “check in” anywhere though. Looks like the social media side of foursquare is dead for me and other apps that have location based searches will probably replace it. Hello Urbanspoon and Yelp. It will be interesting to see where all of this location based stuff goes though. So while I won’t be checking in anywhere, I’ll probably still hold on to the app for a while to see first-hand where things are going.

Facebook. I’m pretty sure I’m going to keep my account open. I plan to lock down the permissions and keep a very limited amount of info available about me. -Just enough for old friends to look me up and contact me if they want to. My almost-completely-decided-upon decision is based on a couple of things: curiosity of where Facebook will end up with all the wild stuff they’re doing with user-data, advertisers and the coming emergence of internet based currency, and (I have to admit this part) since everyone else is on Facebook, I will be too. The easy ability to connect with old friends and extended family is just too easy.

This has been an interesting experiment so far.

Foursquare – I’m done with it. Don’t miss it, don’t expect to find any reason to miss it over the next week and a half and can’t think of a reason why I’d start using it again. There’s just no pay-off in checking in to hundreds of places and earning badges that don’t mean anything at all, while at the same time letting everyone know where I am and that I’m not home. Maybe if a huge number of stores and restaurants were offering specials for mayors or check-ins, that at least would be a reason to think about using it. So I’m done with Foursquare…why can’t I get myself to delete the app from my iphone….

Facebook – Still confused. There have honestly only been a couple of times in the last few days when I thought about opening up the Facebook app on my phone. I still see using the account in primarily a damage control way (I can un-tag photos that I don’t want shared, etc), but I read more and more articles every day about how Facebook is becoming the central hub of the internet. Whether that is a good thing, or bad, remains to be seen. In the mean time it definitely creates an argument for holding on to the account just to see where everything goes. And if nothing else, it’s the ultimate contact list for friends, past and present. So my forecast right now on Facebook is I’ll probably lock down all the privacy settings and hold on to the account. I guess we’ll see how I feel in 4 more days.

Over the last 2-3 years I have been heavily involved on Twitter (almost 5000 tweets), an active participant on Facebook, and recently have started using Foursquare to check in at all the places I go to around town, and even while out of town. Most of the apps on my iphone have something to do with a social media service of some kind. I have decided that for the next 2 weeks I’m going to give myself a no-social-media shock and completely drop it all – cold turkey.

Here’s my forecast for what I think will happen after 2 weeks:

With Twitter, I have previously justified it’s use to myself as saying it’s more business than social – since I follow many of the people/businesses I do, or want to do, business with. I have learned new things by reading articles and watching videos people have tweeted about so my assumption is that I will probably return to using Twitter. There is a social side to Twitter though which can make it either interesting or a waste of time.

I don’t think I’ll miss foursquare at all. Checking in everywhere while I’m running around town is at best a serendipitous way to run into friends that I otherwise wouldn’t have known they were at the same place as I. At worst, it tells people that I’m anywhere else except for being home. If I were a person interested in robbing my house, that is information I would love to have. Foursquare has turned me on to specials at bars and restaurants while I’ve been traveling out of town, and that has been nice. All in all, I don’t think I’ll go back to using it.

Facebook puzzles me at the moment. My assumption is that I will probably delete my account at the end of 2 weeks – just in time for this: Quit FaceBook Day. The #1 reason I haven’t shut down my account prior to now is because it allows for damage control. If someone posts an old picture from college…that I wouldn’t want shown to everyone…I can un-tag myself and ask them to remove it. If I hadn’t been on Facebook, I would never have known the picture was up until a friend made it a point to tell me.

The only other reason my Facebook account is still active is for the pure social nature of the site. If I care to, I can view other people’s profiles and see what they’ve been up to. But is that really social? Seems like a social interaction would be picking up the phone and calling that person to catch up. Not creeping through their pics and reading their wall to wall posts with one of their friends. All of my true friends, and all of my family, have my phone number, email address and know where I live. I’d much rather catch up with them in person or over the phone than in a one-sided creep-a-thon.

Then again, what if I wake up some day and decide, “I really want to get in touch with that one person I was really good friends with in the 2nd grade.” Or, “I lost So-and-so’s contact info and I’ll be traveling through their area next week.” Having a Facebook account would make getting in contact with those people really simple. I guess we’ll see how I feel about it all after 2 weeks of social media abstinence.

Here are my rules:
No opening any social media applications on my iphone or laptop. No visiting any social media site or opening any links in emails, or anything else, that resolve to a social media site. All social media notifications on my iphone must be turned off.

I’ll post the results on Friday, May 28. See you in 2 weeks!