Productivity vs. Social Media

As many of you know, I’ve been immersing myself in some of these social media services lately (Twitter, FriendFeed, and most recently Seesmic and Vimeo). It’s been a lot of fun and I’m really happy to have started doing it, but something has been vexing me.

How does a personal productivity nut reconcile the (arguably fruitless) time spent interacting with people online?

I posted a video over at Seesmic of myself rambling on about it. Would love to hear your feedback, here’s the video:


And for those of you with webcams, the new comment system here at CW allows for video comments using Seesmic (which is crazy cool), so feel free to fire back in your preferred medium.

Also, thanks to Stephen at Productivity in Context for posting the same video and inspiring me to put this to the masses.


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May 23, 2008 | Filed Under Distractions, Productivity 

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  • luissandovaljr
    Great question! I feel that both are separate entities. Reasoning is both can exist without the other. To be productive you don't need social media, and for social media to exist, it does not need to be productive. Nevertheless, there is a great deal to be had from utilizing social media in order to be productive. Social media like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Ning, etc, can be used to increase exposure, share ideas, and market a product.

    You are right about a fine line existing between productive and "wasting time." Personally I try to use only a handful of mediums to keep distractions to a minimum. I think anyone not disciplined can easily find their time eaten up by jumping from network to network without any real direction or clear purpose.

    All in all it's only as good as the person utilizing it. It's as helpful or detrimental as the person decides who decides to use it!
  • I saw that on Twitter, and just had to share it! That looks like a cool service and I will have to take a look at it as soon as I finish my current load of projects and SocMedia experiments.
  • As a blogger, time spent interacting with people online is actually a pretty productive thing for you to be doing.
  • I totally don't see things like Twitter as a waste of time. You and I alone have had some valuable exchanges over Twitter ... heck, you're the whole reason I moved over to Slicehost. Multiply that by the community and the time you spend socializing is really an investment in building a community of resources that you can draw from in the future.
  • Here's the issue with video comments: I can't skim them, search them or easily quote from them. It means that a page of comments turns into 20 3 minute videos so now I have to spend an hour if I want to get a sense of what's being said.

    I really hope that video commenting doesn't take off because the costs far outweigh the meager benefits.
  • A good question indeed. I suppose it depends on what you are trying to accomplice/get out by having a presence on these sites. They certainly open doors to "increase exposure, share ideas, and market a product", not to mention create contacts that might be valuable down the line, but how can one truly know where to draw the line between social media productivity, and aimless wandering.

    Given the countless hours we spend optimizing our presence on each of these sites, and the frequency with which new ones keep popping up, is it best to stick to the sites we have already established ourselves on and keep optimizing until something worthwhile materializes, or do we jump on the train of whats popular at the moment, and hope to pick up little pieces at a time.
  • I love the giant octopus of integration points underneath Widgets that allow users to disperse info practically anywhere! Have you looked at Share This, Stumble Upon and so forth?

    Users want their shares to happen in specific places, the same places, that they always share their info. They want this to happen automatically–and they want the system to know where to disperse this info…

    Broadcasting the info is really an auxiliary experience to the real point of a why I use these applications–what I really want to do is share my interests with my friends and draw them to the point or place of interest through me, by connecting to me.

    The underlying feeling of the user is that they want to connect with people. Broadcasting interest is not really sharing. Sharing is co-operating in a context, within an experience.

    Really what I want to do is align my interests (my sharing) with my trusted social graph ( pre-set) in specific modalities at specific times (the right time every time) in the right place (Location) .

    Publishers want access to me after I leave their site and they want me to bring my social graph back to their site when I am there.

    See what’s up over at http://phlooq.com to see a system that provides more value to users and to web publishers than the “broadcast” systems of Share This, Add This or Tell a Friend.
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