Disclaimer - This post is all about MY usage of a Social Networking Site and it is not meant to offend anybody.
The year dates back to 2010. Before 2010 I was using orkut. I did not take much interest in facebook till then. The story starts in the month of July 2010, I was in Singapore, I had accepted an offer from a company over there, and one of my house mate told me, facebook is more popular than orkut these days. I simply said ok and told to myself, let me have a facebook account myself.
Within couple of months, I had accepted loads of friend requests, though I was kind of hesitant to send a friendship request to anyone, and to this date I am still hesitant. Then I started to travel within Singapore and started posting many pictures and also started going through what other people are doing via Facebook.
Through the next one year till August 2011, I started using more and more facebook, the primary reasons being.
1. Internet was kind a cheap in Singapore and I had no restrictions on my usage.
2. I had countless number of hours to spend, as I was alone, and each day, I needed some company in the form of Internet / facebook / blogs.
3. I found friends to chat on facebook and many people were like me, who stayed in different countries away from family and they too needed to kill time. It was a perfect match.
4. I was more interested in kinda boasting by posting different pictures ( I guess human tendency ).
Finally in the year August 2011, when I thought I had enough of working in Singapore, I left my job and came back to India. Initial two months, I did not check facebook. Coz I had no job and people knew I had relocated to Bangalore. In order to hide myself, I stayed away from Facebook.
Then once I found a job in Bangalore, I was again back on facebook, and this time I had enough enthusiasm to travel to many places in and around Bangalore, I started posting updates pictures etc etc.
But soon I tried to communicate with few of my older engineering classmates on facebook by leaving them a message, pinging them on chat etc etc. It was by the way after many many years. These are the same guys who had sent me a FB friendship request and now did not even reply to my messages.
Then I realized, all this is social networking is a gimmick. I wanted to shut down my account and never visit it. But I had seen couple of guys who deleted their account and within a month they were back.
So I had to do something where in I still had my account enabled, (because, I had many many photos uploaded into it. ) and yet spend lesser time on it.
The main reasons which told me to use lesser facebook are...
1. I had loads of other things to do in India, playing PC games, watching TV, listening to radio, movies books, cleaning my room, coding etc etc. So chosing FB over these was like letting myself down.
2. Internet in India is slow, and is priced. I still have a restriction of 1GB download limit. So I had to stop.
3. I was no more alone, I had loads of people around me, spending time in virtual world was no more necessary.
So my goals were these.
1. Retain my FB account -
coz of loads of pics uploaded, I had loads of travel plans, I wanted to show atleast few people know about my photos if not all..
2. Spend lesser time on FB.
So I went about thinking what to do, and found out the main reason I spent more time on FB was because of other people's posts, their updates, their photos. If I could cut them out on focus on only a few people's updates, I thought I could save time and indeed I was right.
Out of the 100 friends I had on FB at that time, I put 85+ of them on RESTRICTED LIST. So that they do not get my updates.
On the other hand, I unchecked their news feed, so that my wall gets lesser posts, lesser downloads and lesser time.
It worked. I no more had to see other people's updates, and I no more had to tell them what I was doing as I was least interested (Remember, they did not reply to my messages on FB). My Facebook WALL is CLEAR !
All in all its a win win situation. I spend may be 10-20 mins each day on FB checking on updates of my trekking group , and other few people who share similar interests, may be 20 odd. For rest all its like bye bye . And believe me, its almost more than one year, till now nobody has asked me, " why don't I get your updates. ". Cheez I am happy.
Cheers.
The year dates back to 2010. Before 2010 I was using orkut. I did not take much interest in facebook till then. The story starts in the month of July 2010, I was in Singapore, I had accepted an offer from a company over there, and one of my house mate told me, facebook is more popular than orkut these days. I simply said ok and told to myself, let me have a facebook account myself.
Within couple of months, I had accepted loads of friend requests, though I was kind of hesitant to send a friendship request to anyone, and to this date I am still hesitant. Then I started to travel within Singapore and started posting many pictures and also started going through what other people are doing via Facebook.
Through the next one year till August 2011, I started using more and more facebook, the primary reasons being.
1. Internet was kind a cheap in Singapore and I had no restrictions on my usage.
2. I had countless number of hours to spend, as I was alone, and each day, I needed some company in the form of Internet / facebook / blogs.
3. I found friends to chat on facebook and many people were like me, who stayed in different countries away from family and they too needed to kill time. It was a perfect match.
4. I was more interested in kinda boasting by posting different pictures ( I guess human tendency ).
Finally in the year August 2011, when I thought I had enough of working in Singapore, I left my job and came back to India. Initial two months, I did not check facebook. Coz I had no job and people knew I had relocated to Bangalore. In order to hide myself, I stayed away from Facebook.
Then once I found a job in Bangalore, I was again back on facebook, and this time I had enough enthusiasm to travel to many places in and around Bangalore, I started posting updates pictures etc etc.
But soon I tried to communicate with few of my older engineering classmates on facebook by leaving them a message, pinging them on chat etc etc. It was by the way after many many years. These are the same guys who had sent me a FB friendship request and now did not even reply to my messages.
Then I realized, all this is social networking is a gimmick. I wanted to shut down my account and never visit it. But I had seen couple of guys who deleted their account and within a month they were back.
So I had to do something where in I still had my account enabled, (because, I had many many photos uploaded into it. ) and yet spend lesser time on it.
The main reasons which told me to use lesser facebook are...
1. I had loads of other things to do in India, playing PC games, watching TV, listening to radio, movies books, cleaning my room, coding etc etc. So chosing FB over these was like letting myself down.
2. Internet in India is slow, and is priced. I still have a restriction of 1GB download limit. So I had to stop.
3. I was no more alone, I had loads of people around me, spending time in virtual world was no more necessary.
So my goals were these.
1. Retain my FB account -
coz of loads of pics uploaded, I had loads of travel plans, I wanted to show atleast few people know about my photos if not all..
2. Spend lesser time on FB.
So I went about thinking what to do, and found out the main reason I spent more time on FB was because of other people's posts, their updates, their photos. If I could cut them out on focus on only a few people's updates, I thought I could save time and indeed I was right.
Out of the 100 friends I had on FB at that time, I put 85+ of them on RESTRICTED LIST. So that they do not get my updates.
On the other hand, I unchecked their news feed, so that my wall gets lesser posts, lesser downloads and lesser time.
It worked. I no more had to see other people's updates, and I no more had to tell them what I was doing as I was least interested (Remember, they did not reply to my messages on FB). My Facebook WALL is CLEAR !
All in all its a win win situation. I spend may be 10-20 mins each day on FB checking on updates of my trekking group , and other few people who share similar interests, may be 20 odd. For rest all its like bye bye . And believe me, its almost more than one year, till now nobody has asked me, " why don't I get your updates. ". Cheez I am happy.
Cheers.
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