I first learned about facebook back in 2004. I didn’t really understand it then. Now, it’s simple. It was the entire college social experience—recreated online. These days, it’s your entire life—recreated online.
I don’t remember when I joined, but from 2006 until 2008 I deactivated my account. I reactivated my facebook account during the fall of 2008. My job wanted me to do social media and to manage the facebook fan page. Then I was sucked back in.
I notice many people don’t use facebook that much. They don’t post status updates—they don’t share what they’re up to. They’ll play games, or use facebook chat, or just check their account occasionally every few weeks to accept friend requests and see what friends have posted on their walls. I’d say about 3/4 of my facebook friends are these “occasional/casual” users. The other fourth uses facebook almost compulsively. I probably fall into the latter group.
Besides facebook, I also use twitter, flickr, and gowalla, among other social services. Twitter I use mostly for professional reasons, to keep up with web design and user experience. Flickr I use because I have an Android smartphone with a camera and can easily upload images I find amusing or want to share with friends. Gowalla I use because it’s a record of places I’ve traveled to.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I use social media because I’m recording my life story. I want to be able to look back on my life, 20, 30, or 60 years from now and see where I’ve been and just how far I’ve come. And I want my life to be an open book. I want my friends and family and my children and grandchildren to be able to know my story, if they want to.
Everybody has a story to tell, and now social media makes it easier than ever to record and share your history.
Still, there are other ways to tell stories besides social media. How do you prefer to tell your story?