Social media and our many faces
Social media is weird.
So here I'm looking at Twitter, and discovering that I'm being followed by couple locals interested in writing. One of them is a reporter for the local newspaper, the other is a student of mobile computing and social media.
But my Twitter account is primarily to talk about roleplaying and writing of RP and SF, and I expect that the only people who will follow me are those who are interested in my thoughts on roleplaying and gaming.
See, this is where things get weird. It's why I have more than one blog, and at one time had five or six of them. I don't believe that the people interested in my roleplaying writing are going to necessarily be interested in my ducks. Or the people interested in starting a SF writing group are going to care about my social life.
Whenever I write, even on Twitter, I'm thinking, "Who is my audience?" And that's why the blogs are segregated... because each blog has a different intended audience. I don't assume that the audience is interested in me, but that they're interested in the topic which I write about.
Which is what makes Twitter awkward for me. I follow a handful of people, and there are others I might want to follow... but where I'm interested in reading what someone is doing in their roleplaying writing, I'm not necessarily interested in what they had for dinner, or how annoyed they are at having to stand in line, or how boring jury duty is. But Twitter doesn't lend itself to multiple accounts easily.
This pure "social media" thing seems much better suited to close friends... people who are interested in the person as well as the content. Maybe that's why it's "social" media.
Of course, that makes me wonder about people on twitter who follow fifty or sixty people... are they really interested in them as people? Or do they just become a stream of data to interact with?