New social sites are popping up every day, and while it is nice to have an account on each one of them, make sure you are not devoting a lot of your time to these sites, as the value is in the contacts you make, not in the sites themselves. They try to hold your attention and fascination for as long as possible by providing all kinds of little things you can do while they plaster advertisements all over the page, hoping you will click on one of them.

Many of the people who use the web constantly are already getting tired of such sites, and aren’t logging into them as much as they used to. I am included in that group. I used Twitter more than almost anyone I knew, but I quickly fell out of love with the site due to constant downtime, and the realization that Twitter was not providing me with anything.

I have accounts on pretty much all the “cool” Web 2.0 sites, but I find instant messaging, e-mail, phone and actually visiting with people to be a much better route of real two way communication. Two way communication is key to having relationships with people, and I don’t believe that Twitter and other such services truly provide that fulfilling experience that we require.

So, remove Twitter from your phone, stop logging into MySpace and Facebook. Focus on building relationships with real people that don’t include hiding behind sites built by third parties whose only focus is to find ways to entice more people to join so they can make even more money.

You will be amazed at how much time, energy and focus you can retake just by divesting yourself of all these time sinks.

Originally posted on July 17, 2007 @ 7:20 pm