How I Use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn
Update: I got rid of Facebook and Instagram. Read here for my reasoning behind that decision.
Update a status.
Favourite a tweet.
Like a picture.
Add a random stranger to your professional network.
I use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, which are all considered to be social web apps. They each have their own purpose for me and my usage of each platform has changed throughout the years. I’m going to write a bit about how I am currently using each of these web apps.
Facebook is used for staying in touch with friends and family. I’m a bit selective as to who I add to my friend network on Facebook since the things I share are things I’d normally share or talk about with friends. When I post something on Facebook, I imagine it as being a direct message between me and my friends. Occasionally I do an audit of the friends I’ve got on Facebook and unfriend anyone who I no longer what to keep in touch with anymore (wow that sounds ruthless).
I had a really bad habit of checking Facebook all the time, so I took some measures to change that. I first installed the News Feed Eradicator Chrome extension which blocks anything from appearing on your Facebook feed. This means that every time I visit Facebook on my computer, I don’t see any new updates from my friend network. As a result, I usually navigate to another website or start another task.
Of course, I could still end up visiting Facebook from my phone to see the news feed, which is exactly what I ended up doing. In fact, I ended up using the Facebook mobile app more often after depriving myself from the news feed on my computer. How did I resolved this? I just deleted the Facebook app from my phone! There is no reason for me to have access to Facebook from my pocket since nothing is time sensitive on Facebook (i.e. I don’t have to respond to something right away). However, I still have the Facebook Messenger app on my phone so I can direct message people on the fly.
You might be wondering what’s the point of even using Facebook if I basically block everything from showing up? How do I stay up to date with what my friends and family are doing? Well anytime I’m wondering what someone has been up to, I visit their Facebook profile and catch up on what they’ve posted. I view this as being similar to what people did before the internet “happened”, where people had to call (or send a letter) to someone to get news about what they’ve been up to. Rather than being bombarded by a feed of constant updates from my entire friend network, I get to select what I want to look at.
I occasionally hear about people deleting their Facebook account (usually to rejoin the platform a week later). This doesn’t really interest me at the moment since I have a good handle of my usage and I use their direct messaging feature on a regular basis to stay in touch with different people. However, I do understand why many people are interested in deleting their account, especially if you their find themselves checking Facebook 20+ times a day and spending hours consuming “non productive” content.
Twitter is where I stay current about news related to web development. I follow a bunch of web developers who tweet some interesting things about the web tools and programming languages I regularly use. I also try to post my web development learnings on Twitter to reinforce what I’ve learned and also to help others that follow me on the platform. In addition, I share interesting articles I’ve read and try to provide a comment on the article to provide some context to others as well as to help me retain a bit of what I’ve read.
I use both the Twitter desktop and mobile apps and occasionally have direct message conversations with others. I think there is a lot more I could be doing with Twitter to better take advantage of the platform. For example, I could be separating people/accounts into lists so that I can view tweets related to certain types of accounts (e.g. developers, friends, bloggers) or certain subjects (e.g. programming, business, productivity apps). Dividing things into lists might help me read up on certain topics that interest me at a particular instant, rather than looking at a mashup of all tweets in one timeline. Thankfully, Twitter’s algorithms put the content I am likely to want to read and interact with at the top of my timeline (which I find to be quite accurate).
I’m actually not happy with how I’ve been using Instagram. I follow a bunch of fitness accounts with the purpose of being inspired to exercise, but the past month or so I haven’t done any real exercising, so this is evidently not working. I also find I’m looking through Instagram way too much and not really enjoying all the stuff I’m consuming on the platform. I should spend some time clearing out accounts that I no longer want to follow anymore.
In terms of posting photos, I’ve posted things such as cool meals I’ve prepared, events I’ve attended, and beautiful views I’ve witnessed. I haven’t really posted on my own account in a while, but intend to share many pictures I take while on vacation in a few months time. I did create an account for my dog, Keto, because I knew I was going to be taking a lot of pictures of him as he grew. That account is mostly used as a record of moments I’ve spent with Keto. I occasionally like looking back at the pictures I’ve taken of him to reminisce about the good times we’ve had.
I’ve never really been a heavy user of LinkedIn, but that could be largely due to the fact I’ve been a student for the majority of my time on the platform. I try to keep my job experience up to date, which only really comes in handy when I’m applying for jobs so that I have a place for recruiters to read up on my past professional experience and job related skills.
I rarely post any content on LinkedIn. I occasionally share some articles I’ve written on my Medium blog, but don’t really share any sort of “professional wisdom”. I suppose now that I’m working a full time job I could share some of the general lessons I’ve learned on the job, which may be interesting to other people.
In terms of accepting new connections on LinkedIn, I’m only accepting people I know, who work in the same industry as me, or if I see for the potential of a relationship that could be mutually beneficial in the future.
I took advantage of LinkedIn’s free month of their premium membership when I was looking for a job. Their premium membership allowed me to reach a bit more people and send some direct messages to people that might be able to help with my job search. I ended up only having a useful conversation with 1 person and ultimately, it did not help me with my job search.
Now that I’ve got a good stable job and gaining experience at a company, I find myself receiving messages from recruiters about job opportunities. I think LinkedIn might prove useful for me in the future, when exploring new opportunities, but for now I don’t do a whole lot with the platform.
How I use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn is always changing and I’m sure I’ll be using each platform slightly differently in a couple months time. Overall, I think I benefit from using three out of the four of these platforms at the moment. I will continue to use these web apps for the foreseeable future (if there is even such a thing) and continue fine tuning my usage.
