Are you addicted to Twitter?

Today, I read about internet addiction and the fact that this is becoming a huge problem. Apparently, if one has this disease, there is a strong urge to use the internet. Symptoms can be spending more time online, denying internet use or even avoiding offline contact. A really extreme example is from a man in Japan who stabbed five of his relatives, because his father decided to cancel their internet connection.

I have noticed myself that the first thing I do when I turn on my computer is check my twitter account. That is no symptom of addiction, but the fact that I log in on Twitter up to 10 or 15 times a day just to check and read my timeline is more concerning… Actually, it sounds more like a waste of time.

Do you recognize this and do you want to know more about your twitter use, have a look at Xefer.com. This site creates a graph of the time and day you placed your tweets.

For instance, the following picture shows the graph of @Dutchcowgirls.

In my opinion it is a little bit concerning when you have a dot on every day of the week and at every hour ;)

Another site is Tweetstats.com, it is similar to the previous one, but slightly more extensive. Here you can view your monthly Twitter use, people you reply to and it creates a tag cloud of your tweets.  

There are several ways to see what you talked about and what you have been doing all the time, maybe you will find out your Twitter use is concerning, but it could also be that it is just not such a waste of time after all.

Social What?

A lot of people think social networks are the same as social media, but… that is not true. Social media can be described as online platforms where users create and share content with other people. This makes social media a dynamic and up-to-date tool.

Social media is divided in a few specified areas, and just one of them are the social networks, which are for instance Hyves, Facebook and LinkedIn.

The image below shows all the categories (publish, share, discuss, social networks, microblog, livestream, livecast, virtual worlds, social games and massive multiplayer online) within the social media landscape and some examples.

In my opinion, one of the most important strengths of social media is the fact that content can be spread very quickly. This is the so called “snowball effect”. It all starts with just one person who spreads some content. When his connections like it, they will be the ones who spread it further and further. There is a theory, the six degrees of separation, which claims that everyone on our planet is connected through a network with six levels. So, this should mean that one needs only six social media connections to spread content and reach the whole world with it.

Thus, a lot can be done with social media, but don’t forget it is more than just the social networks…