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And obviously, you find it worthwhile since you continue doing it. The larger issue is whether or not you find this time excessive for the "reward." Personally, I hope to reduce my time spent with social media activity and invest more time writing better, and fewer blog posts - relying on folks like you to "filter" what's important for me.
As for total time, that's hard for me to measure, as I believe most of the time I'm multitasking, with multiple tabs, etc. I check in on some of these items throughout a workday per se, while on the weekends, it'd be easier to measure.
I think one thing that those who consume social media most efficiently get is that change is indeed good. And that you have to condition yourself to begin trying new things (even if only to throw them out after a few tries) as quickly as they come out and as quickly as you can.
Nice post Louis.
No matter where you would size the market "consumers of media" will always be a bigger market than "producers of media". You both consume and produce on a regularly basis. The only real "new" component of this seems to be in the "ease of sharing".
There are at least three central themes: 1.) "What I need/want to stay on top of, 2.) what I need/want to make others aware of, 3.) what I need/want to opine on.
Then there is also a range from "mild to rabid" when it comes to consumption, sharing and production. I'm guessing at least on the consumption side you would fall into the rabid category (as do many early adopters).
I have zero need to follow the early adoption curve of social media. It's interesting but it's mostly entertainment. That being the case I don't have a need or desire to grow out FriendFeed/Twitter/etc followers. The blog I work on is about television metrics and I subscribe to about 50 RSS feeds that focus on the "business" of television or in some cases (NYT, Wash Post, USA Today) more general television. I do not subscribe to the litany of content available about "shows" where there are potentially thousands of feeds. As is, there is a ton of duplication of information (same info via different stories). I don't see expanding the # of feeds I read on the topic by much.
While we do use delicious to share links with our readers I haven't repurposed those on FriendFeed. I don't think by and large the FriendFeed users are very interested in stories about television. And of our user base the crossover of people who have even ever heard of FriendFeed is very small.
If not for inertia, I probably wouldn't share my blog posts on FriendFeed either, as with the exception of BattleStar Galactica info, there doesn't seem to be much FF interest in general TV ratings information.
Personally, I tend to try to not get caught up in the hype around buzzwords, which to me "Social Media" largely remains. Do I love that people can comment on our blog? ABSOLUTELY. Over time, I have learned a lot about the TV business via the comments. Will I switch to Disqus? I imagine yes, and likely very soon, but not because of anything anyone would label "social media", but rather the ability to respond to comments via e-mail is a big deal to us convenience wise.
I'm definitely NOT anti Social Media, and I find your workflow extremely interesting. Still, I believe you are working on solving problems that thousands or tens of thousands have. Not hundreds of thousands or millions. I believe you are touching on issues that are of interest to the average @LouisGray follower on Twitter, but I think it unlikely you are touching on issues that even the average twitter user (still an early adopter crowd) focuses on.
I'm not sure I have that right, and even if I do, I'm definitely not sure it won't change to where more and more people are doing ALL the things you do. But I consume a ton of media and look at that consumption from a very different lens than you do. Just offering up another perspective.
For most people, even most early adopters, social media is a means to some other goal. If you're spending so much time with social media that you *need* a workflow, I question whether that other goal (whatever it is) is being served.
Unfortunately, I have a proper job so can't spend all my time consuming (or generating) content.
However, my pattern is generally
1) Gmail - (includes any blog comments via Disqus). I can simply reply via email here to post any followup comments
2) FriendFeed - comment/like as necessary.
3) Google Reader - Share items, star stuff (mainly video/podcasts or lengthy posts I will view later)
4) Twhirl - some duplication here
Unfortunately, the lines between 2), 3) and 4) are getting increasingly blurred (i.e. duplicate content). I am toying with making the personal blogs/Twittererers I read into 'imaginary friends' on FF to combat this but I am wary about having all my eggs in one basket.
I tend to prefer to reply to Tweets in Twhirl (for the URL shortening) and character counting but I guess FF could do this with GM scripts.
Part of the answer can come from a note I did at the end of last year:
My Laptop And Me: A Committed Relationship
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2007/12/my-laptop...
So, outside of reading around 200 feeds in Google reader, and tracking friendfeed I typically troll around for who is speaking where, on what, in what format and then comparing that to what seems to be of interest to clients. Then I queue those up for review as i have time.
(no youtube?)
-Des
http://techwatch.reviewk.com
still a lot of room for "wholeness of vision" to be enabled, enterprise-wise
and roi on the time spent, yikes, possibly less than we might think, unless one is in the profession
Like you I have 100s of information that I need to track and it is no easy task especially on the many projects that I am working on.
The dynamics of the way we filter social media means that there may never be a be all and end all solution that can cater for our exact needs and we will always use multiple streams in social media.
A service that combines RSS feeds + comment tracking + FriendsFeeds, etc would certainly be something considered, but would be every embrace such a tool is yet to be seem.
Got Social Network Profiles? Expose Yourself
http://www.socialprofilr.com
In fact I'm increasingly using FriendFeed not as a direct aggregator, but as a repository for "noisy" people, simply because it does a daily dump to email so I know I can sift quickly through the dirt for the occasional gem.
Curious to know how long it takes you to go through this process.
Mark
I now understand how the entire workflow works with a bonus of what all are the important social media tools that are used in the whole process and how can they make your life much easier. I knew about the latest tools but now the purpose of each becomes much more easier to relate and understand and is tempting enough to inspire me to adopt a similar workflow for the day.
Thanks for this blog Louis Grey! With a hope to receive much more useful stuff in future.
Rovr reads all your blogs so that you can just read what they say anywhere on the web they're talking about.
Let me know who you think.
Best,
Marc Meyer, CEO, Activeweave BlogRovr.
as I mentioned, I've been doing some research studying blog readers (google "baumer blog readers" if you're interested), but one of the things to which this post really drew my attention is the way that blog reading is really situated within a number of myriad other practices of consuming, producing, and co-constructing social media. there are some rather compelling, and potentially quite important, concepts to explore here with respect to understand how concepts like readership, authorship, identity, and participation get constituted in these evolving cultural forms (yes, I'm waxing a little academic here).
the main take away from this comment is that I'm questioning the distinction between production and consumption in social media: how does this approach frame the ways in which we think about these media, what might it be causing us to miss, and what are some alternative framings we might be able to use?
The problem with - for instance - RSS reading is that it is truly druglike, and yet in a totally psychological sense. Once you're subscribed to 300 blogs it's very hard to walk away.
I found myself in a similar place to you, and then looked at a good friend of mine who is about the best connected tech type I know. He has 5 tabs constantly open on his browser with the sites he follows, and that's it. He sometimes Twitters - but not excessively - and rarely uses IM and other tools. Once I'd realised that actually the *quality* of my reading had dropped exponentially by having so much volume, I decided to do similar. I now use AideRSS to filter feeds and am down to around 100 articles a day, if that. And you know what? I feel less panicked, more in-touch, better able to comment, more connected than I did with 800 unread items, none of which was going to get the kind of attention I wanted to give them. Genuinely, less is more.
I love the Herbert Simon quote: "...a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention". I think it's going to become more and more pertinent as information noise increases.
Good luck, either which way :-)
My workday consists of email, twitter/friendfeed, Greader, and IM first and foremost. All the other things such as stumbleupon, mixx, or anything else I may be on comes later and aren't really high priorities.
Friendfeed would be last for me too, but for entirely different reasons. I feel that's where the most participation is required and so much more of my brain cells are necessary on Friendfeed. I just save it for last, otherwise I'd never get to anything else.