It’s was a tough hard Saturday, enjoyable and painful, I ache, but good. The week was hectic and the demands relentless. I made good progress but more to do. As tough and demanding the weeks work had been that Saturday gardening core really wore me out. Nothing wrong with hard work!
I enjoyed every physical, therapeutic and deep thinking moment of it. And at the end of the day, sun setting, grass cut, patio jet washed and all things looking where they should be, I achieve a sense of “in control” which sometimes is difficult to realise in a work environment, not to mention home life. With a glass of red and a steak on the BBQ I had a chance to catch up on some Social Media on the iPad, the standard past-time activity in this day and age.
I do most Social Media places to a greater or lesser extent. Wish I had more time on them especially LinkedIn and Twitter. Yah, yah I am on Facebook but that is more a family and friends sort of thing, content fleeting, often assuming and sometimes heartfelt. Funny assuming videos and pictures of pets – yawn – but yes share away, you don’t have to log in!
But Facebook isn’t the main feed for my curious mind to obtain professional views of the state of business practice and opportunity, which is always of interest. I turn to LinkedIn for professional business content. I’m aware that this will be governed by who I am contented with, the nature for their business, my profession, and the path by which our network contention were established along with the typical profiling analytics to ensure push content is identified, advertising targeting maximised, and as a user I am fully informed.
Some great articles were to be found and some great comments and news as to who now works where, who connected to whom and what’s going on etc . . . and of course the plethora of job adverts accompanied by the relentless product news. Yes!
All that stuff is cool. But what’s this? A give away “prize competition”, “happy Friday cupcake” picture, a “lol”, “omg”, a caption quiz, a maths conundrum, and on and on . . . . Not what I was looking for, not what I was expecting and now a jungle of stuff that I have to navigate through to find the real voices that I was so looking forward to.
I guess I’m guilty of a “like” or two on these types of “fun” posts, but it dawned on me, what the heck, I want to distinguish between my professional working social network and my more private fun network. I’ll buy the Time newspaper to be more fully informed and the Daily Mail for a joke. I have a choice based upon the publications editorial practice and positioning. On Social Media, self-governed editorial practice rules this could become a problem!
Is it inevitable that all Social Networks will merge? Is it that our lives will be unable to distinguish between work, play and family time and zones? Broadsheets v’s Tabloids! The tracking of our likes, responses and posts are all part of your social media history and build a picture of us as a person, a professional, our values, interests, views, beliefs, likes and dislikes.
I do think for LinkedIn members as a starting point your profile and activity history is a fundamental part of a business transaction worth, a professional currency. Linkedin should be professional fun yes, engaging and assuming content yes, but ultimately business related . . . So we should “Like”, we should “Comment” and we should “Share”. But I worry as to where this is going. So should I be worried? Am I overreacting? Help get me out of here I have my serious hat on!
A LIFE LESS ORDINARY 