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Different Worlds


I love my social media: blog-hopping, forum-chatting, IM-ing…yet there’s a large number of my friends who don’t feature on any of these. They’re not technologically averse, these technologies just don’t fit easily into their lives.

Take one friend for example: she works part-time, has two small children, and a busy family life. She’s got no spare time to spend on forums and blogs…she’d rather just pick up the phone and call me, or send a text! She misses out on little bits of my life that others don’t…my random thoughts and recent events are often posted on my personal blog, and online friends read that, so when I actually talk to them in person, they’re often quite aware of what’s going on in my life. Non-online friends aren’t, and sometimes I almost resent having to tell them about my life, as I feel I’ve already done that ‘work’ on my blog.

I wonder if, as I get more web-based in my social interactions, these friends will continue to be close friends, or whether something has to give? Will it be their lack of online presence, or will I be cutting my online activity down?

Actually, I think I’m already beginning to cut down my online activity: time with friends and family is beginning to win out against wandering the web…my time online’s becoming more focussed, and I’m becoming more disciplined about where I want to spend my time….MySpace is almost never visited, Bebo very infrequently…blog reading / posting time’s perhaps increasing, I think in response…if my friends blog, I’ll read it…but I don’t necessarily want to spend time reading the minutae of their recent activity on a social networking site, I just don’t feel it’s relevant any more.

Ohhh, I’m so backward!!!

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Unknown said…
Jennie thanks for this post, two things you commented on my Widget post recently and I have just seen this which may be of interest http://mashable.com/2007/08/27/hypercube/

The second thing is that there is a lot of talk recently about friendships on things like Social Networks and how your "friends" can include people like your boss, your husband, exes etc So friend list can be quite diverse.

The other thing I wanted to say was that I have no away of contacting you apart from commenting on this blog post because as far as I'm aware your not on Facebook or Twitter probably not a bad thing as they are huge time drainers!
28 August 2007 at 18:32
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