The Social Media Reverse - 10 reasons to stay away

You have heard everyone go on about social networking (including me) and how you should be Myspacing, Facebooking, Twittering etc but what about considering the flipside of social networking. Could you think of ten reasons why not to be involved in social media sites? Would you even miss it if you did? Would your life change dramatically if you didn't twitter? John Mariotti has written an excellent alternative arcticle about why he is now staying away from social media - here are his 10 main points:

1. Social Media/Networking is an invitation to at best, uncontrolled and permanent over-exposure, and at worst, identity theft or misuse.

2. All of us are drowning in a tidal wave of complexity already, and these social networking sites make this complexity worse by an order of magnitude.

3. Social networking is in the evolutionary stage, and as such, all of the sites that exist now will change, evolve become either more useful and secure or go away. The lessons are there in recent history: Compuserve, early versions of AOL, Prodigy and all the other now defunct or otherwise transitory Internet, email or proprietary Web systems.

4. Just when a lot of people learn to use one of the social networking sites/systems, someone will come up with a newer, better, cooler or more fashionable one.

5. Security of social networking sites is as great a risk as passing business cards around in a busy bar. No matter how many times the site owner/operator promises your information will be protected, secure, etc., the lure of money will make them liars. Someone will buy the site for the contacts that come with it — period. Then they will sell those lists to as many people and companies as will pay for them, to do whatever they wish with them.

6. There are many other, more focused ways of networking and marketing instead of placing your identity, your information, photos, etc. in the public — very public — domain.

7. Real business people realize that this social networking trend is superficial. True relationships may originate in email or other similar venues, but must become personal and not electronic to be of meaningful value.

8. The hassle of meddling with your computer and the so-called “easy to use” interfaces of such social networking sites is far too great compared to the complexity it adds.

9. When I want to expand my network, I want to choose who will be involved and know that their involvement is willing and enthusiastic — not the result of an email and a few clicks of the mouse.

10. I am simply too busy to meddle with something that is at least largely populated with people who have nothing better to do with their time, or others who think is it somehow an easy way to really be connected to a lot of people.

So there you go, there is someone who seems firmly set on staying away from social media - me I am firmly staying put in the social media environment - I enjoy it too much!!