Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, oh my!

[Catrin]

It is useful for keeping in touch with select individuals - which is mainly what I use it for. I do have my profile settings so that only those I've "friended" (see how it creeps into your vocabulary by creating non-existent verbs?) can see it. I also make use of custom lists because I figure my family couldn't care less about my kettlebell or other fitness activities or vice versa, for example. My actual posts only really deal with fitness and the occasional cool picture or sharing of a motivational quite. I will not get more personal than that as everything on the internet stays there. I've been more personal on TE than I've been on FB, but that is different, and there are topics I won't post about here for the same reason.

Haven't thought about using Twitter for news though, will have to see if that works for me. I tend to be too busy to pay much attention to the news and if I can get it from Twitter without a firehose stream of notifications then that might be a good approach.

[OakLeaf]

I gave up on flame wars about the same time I left Compuserve ...

I do FB only - I use it to keep up with friends, to get notifications from organizations I belong to, and as my primary news aggregator.

DH does Twitter only, and it's an ENORMOUS time suck to him. He justifies it because of the news feed - if anyone remembers CNN back when they first started in the 1980s, kind of like that, but obviously even less filtered - but then he gets into back and forths with newspaper editors, plays the Twitter games, etc., etc. ....

[Irulan]

I sure do love that xkcd comic. I survived a whole lot of flame wars on usenet. It cured me of internet arguing.

[ny biker]

This just in via the twitter: new Foo Fighters album will be released this fall.

(And if I had not been stupid enough to unfollow the 9:30 Club in DC, I would have known about the surprise Foo Fighters show there last week before it happened...)

[lph]

And if I hadn't been on Twitter recently I wouldn't have known that Neil Gaiman is currently in Syria, and will be coming to Norway in a week. The first is rather heartbreaking, the second is making me a little giddy.

[Crankin]

Ok, now I know why Twitter doesn't appeal to me. I don't know who Neil Gaiman is... I do know the Foo Fighters, but only as a group DS #1 likes.
I am a popular culture idiot. Rarely go to the movies, don't care that much about music, and the celebrity craziness kinda makes me ill. While I do eventually watch some of the current movies at home, I go to the theatre maybe 1-2X a year, usually for an independent film I've read about. Even if I like a song, I couldn't tell you who sings it. I've always been like that, and it was a detriment when I taught at the gym and people would ask "who sings that," about a song on my tapes. I think at the height of the 60s/early 70s music boom, when my friends went to concerts every weekend, I saw maybe 4-5 in high school, college, grad school.
Yeah, get my news from the (gasp) newspaper, which I read in paper form, unless it's freeezing or icy and I can't get down my driveway to get it. Then I resort to the I Pad. I watch local and network news every night, unless I am out for dinner. See, I am turning into my parents!

[Irulan]

Hmm, what did I get off today's twitter? Not much that has to do with pop culture or entertainment, that is for sure. Right now I see lots of different stuff about Idaho same sex marriage law debate from the local newspaper who is getting it from a bunch of different sources, the Science Porn feed, misc biking (mtb4her, betterride, bike shop girl), Obama's feed and a few misc friends.

I'm @geargrrl if anyone cares

[ny biker]

Ok, now I know why Twitter doesn't appeal to me. I don't know who Neil Gaiman is... I do know the Foo Fighters, but only as a group DS #1 likes.
I am a popular culture idiot. Rarely go to the movies, don't care that much about music, and the celebrity craziness kinda makes me ill. While I do eventually watch some of the current movies at home, I go to the theatre maybe 1-2X a year, usually for an independent film I've read about. Even if I like a song, I couldn't tell you who sings it. I've always been like that, and it was a detriment when I taught at the gym and people would ask "who sings that," about a song on my tapes. I think at the height of the 60s/early 70s music boom, when my friends went to concerts every weekend, I saw maybe 4-5 in high school, college, grad school.
Yeah, get my news from the (gasp) newspaper, which I read in paper form, unless it's freeezing or icy and I can't get down my driveway to get it. Then I resort to the I Pad. I watch local and network news every night, unless I am out for dinner. See, I am turning into my parents!

Well you wouldn't have to follow any pop culture stuff if you didn't want to. Twitter can provide breaking news on a local, national and international level. It has come in handy for me when there was a major Metro (subway) accident a few years back, and when we had to evacuate our office building after an apparent earthquake it was Twitter that told me where the quake was centered and how strong it was (and that I should text my cousin to have her contact her son, who lived near the epicenter). It provides information on power outages and broken water mains in my neighborhood. And it was invaluable during hurricane Sandy.

It's easy to tailor it to your tastes and preferences, and it's also easy to unfollow anyone if you decide you're not interested in their posts.

[salsabike]

And if I hadn't been on Twitter recently I wouldn't have known that Neil Gaiman is currently in Syria, and will be coming to Norway in a week. The first is rather heartbreaking, the second is making me a little giddy.

Yes to both of those! I really like his work. Now you all have me interested in Twitter as a news device. lph, what were you following to get that news? His account?

I am very much a FB user and have found it a great way to show friends all over the globe great pictures--from bike rides, from our Iceland trip, etc., interesting art sources like thisiscolossal.com and streetartutopia.com, and the kind of science-geeky stuff a lot of us love, like NASA 360 and NASA's Earth Observatory. Seeing everyone's Mom pictures on Mother's Day was a total delight. Often I learn about totally wonderful stuff like 2Cellos from friends on FB. Etc. Most of my friends avoid politics. Lots of bike ride pics. Music. Art. Family and friend pics. Explore.org (thanks to TE's yellow for that one)--live animal and nature cams. A wealth of delightful and interesting stuff.

[Irulan]

With any of this stuff, you can get totally overwhelmed or take a few minutes to learn about it and how you might or might now use it.
I don't quite get Instagram, and LinkedIn seems pretty useless to me.

[rebeccaC]

And if I hadn't been on Twitter recently I wouldn't have known that Neil Gaiman is currently in Syria, and will be coming to Norway in a week. The first is rather heartbreaking, the second is making me a little giddy.

Well that generated a interesting conversation at work about The Sandman series .

According to a colleague at work he's researching Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, yes heartbreaking! Maybe a book or doc.

[lph]

Rebecca, check out the 4 minute interview the BBC news did with him, he's reposted it. It's very moving.

Crankin, Twitter has just as much, or as little, to do with popular culture as a newspaper does. It's there, alongside local and international news. The difference is that you can interact more. I follow Neil Gaiman because I enjoy his writing. Because of that I now know more about the refugee situation in Syria on a personal level than I would ever have learned otherwise. I can ask him, or any of the other people who were there with him direct questions about the experience, and have a fair chance of getting an answer.

Instagram I'm not that interested in. I have a few friends who enjoy photography and use it a lot more than other social media, so it's a way of seeing what they're up to.

eta: One of the major bonuses of Instagram, and Twitter probably too, is the chance of stumbling over something or someone really interesting just by chance. I was browsing Instagram one day, just looking at good photos, and via via via saw a photo of something that looked like a tame cheetah. It was, and his owner is Saudi, and he hunts with it. He also does big game hunting in poor areas of Africa, and gives away the meat to poor families. He posts under the name saudhunter. No matter how you may feel about hunting, this is a pretty interesting and unusual guy, and guaranteed someone I would never have heard of otherwise.