Shutt World .co.uk

Myspace, Facebook, Twitter,  Google Buzz, Linked in, and now Google Plus.

Do we really need them?

Ok I think I closed my myspace as no one uses that anymore, but now I have a facebook account 2 twitter counts, one for friends feeds and one to get all the twitter news that I’m interested in, I kinda have google buzz but don’t use it, a Linked in account I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with as it linked to work and I don’t really want to update that with the rubbish I post on twitter of facebook, and now I have Google+ too.

Problem is I don’t actually have anything worth saying, and neither do most people really, the problem with social networks is that people will update with anything, and the feed will show you everything they say, even if its not something that interests you. Take for example me commenting on the giant spider at work (that I’ve not seen and I believe is a lie) but really no one’s that interested, and if I hadn’t asked for weapon advice I wouldn’t have even got the facebook responses to it. Occasionally someone might post something of interest but there’s no way of filtering the junk around it that’s of no interest.

The problem with facebook is also I think the main draw, the games, which then spam your wall and fill other peoples news feeds with requests for help or just to say they’re being played, then you now have a page and news feed from every interest you listed if it matched something, so tv shows have pages and update you with news and stuff, its information overload.

Twitter suffers the same problem, you follow people that are of interest or your friends and you then need to filter it all into lists so you can at least see your friends posts, in the mix of all the celeb gossip and website news or whatever is on your feeds. This is why I have 2 accounts one I keep in touch with friends on and one for all the news and things I’m intersted in but would probably flood my readers so I’d never see my friends tweets.

Ignoring the privacy issues google buzz seemed to have when it came out they did one thing I liked, it was basically a facebook status feed with none of the games or apps or anything else, it was just back to the social talking side, then it never got going here so lets forget that.

So no Google+ wants to move in on facebook’s territory, its still in beta so maybe not fully working, but what I see is a clean google branded facebook, you can group your friends etc together and post just to certain groups feeds, and is a nice threaded feed like facebook have had for a while and buzz used too. Thing is the Sparks feature just doesn’t appeal as its a search on a topic and I can’t see a way to limit it to specific sources. I guess if I want that it’s clutter your feed again facebook style by “friending” pages for things I’m interested in.

So far Google+ doesn’t offer anything that facebook doesn’t apart from a less busy stream/feed, but then I only know 3 people  on it at the minute and there’s no games. As it is I don’t think many people will be leaving facebook because that’s where everyone is, some people will use multiple services, others will stick with just one, but as that just one tends to be facebook, that’s where I think most will stay.

Me I’ll use the lot and find someway of combining them so I can still follow the people that refuse to use facebook, the people that refuse to use twitter and those that move to google+, those that refuse to use any? Well there’s always email or the phone.

Well thanks for reading this far, I’ve just relised I didn’t have a  point to make or I made it right at the start and the rest is just waffle.

TL;DR – Doesn’t matter really :p