How to Train Your Social Media

This is not a post that is going to recommend your trim the people you follow or drop one of your favourite platforms.

I'm going to tell you a secret: you can now train your social media to show you more of the kind of things you want to see.

How? Well the start of understanding comes from the knowledge that there is so much content on sites like Facebook that even if you scrolled for a day, you could not view every single thing posted by people you follow (plus sponsored content). Same goes for Pinterest.

What both these social media platforms have found is that due to sheer volume and because you can't seem to curate your own content, they have had to figure out a way to do it for you. The answer was algorithms.

I don't know the nuts and bolts of it all, and can only speak from my own experience here, but I do believe that we have reached the point where you now have to "train" your social media.

The mechanics of it are simple - the "like", "comment", "share" and "repin" buttons are your friends. Everytime you indicate to Facebook that you LIKE something - a joke meme, a news story, a friend's photo - it remembers. It then tried to show more of that kind of stuff in your feed. Pinterest now operates on the same principal, showing you items that are similar to things you've recently liked or repinned.

I noticed this on Pinterest when I opened it one day and saw page after page of pretty landscape photography. I realised this had mainly been what I had been pinning lately. I figured out then that I had to tell the algorithm I wanted to see other things! Unfortunately those things weren't in my feed (because Pinterest didn't know I would like to view them) so I had to do manual searches and then like and repin different content. I now try not to pin too much of the same thing in the same session, thus ensuring my home feed stays interesting!

What is scary about Facebook is that it also pays attention to what you Google and shop for. I recently googled and looked at some foot spas for my mum's Xmas present. When I opened a new tab for Facebook, it showed me ads for foot spas for days. I looked up a cookbook on Booktopia, and sure enough when I flicked back to Facebook, there was an ad for it in my feed. Ta da!

YouTube remembers what you've watched and liked too; on the app it offers an a main feed called "What to Watch" compiled using this info. You can ignore this by going to your subscriptions, but the What to Watch suggestions shouldn't be ignored - most of the time there will be videos in there you will enjoy. 

So what's the moral of the story? Be aware that everything you search for, look at, buy online, like, share, comment on and favourite is being logged. It can be a good thing - but it can also make you the target of advertisers and marketing. Is anonymous browsing the answer, I wonder?

And how long until Instagram gets on board?

Have you had to train your social media lately? Got any good or unsettling stories?

My social media story

 

 [image source] 

Today I realized I have far to many fingers in far too many social media pies. The realization came when I started looking at reddit and linkedin, just exploring as I had heard them talked about in various spheres both online and off. And then I started thinking about how many accounts I already have, how many I have tried and deleted accounts for, and how many I have yet to explore. Let’s make a list shall we?

I LIKE

Twitter – obviously a fan. Now my main source of news, I don’t watch TV news or read newspapers any more.

Facebook – have considered deleting a number of times however have stayed for the Zynga games. I also have started liking it again post-wedding as my cousins all told me it’s the only way they have of keeping up with family news. I’m reading my feed more often now to be more involved in their lives, and also actually posting status updates now after being begged to by a relative :p Considering removing everybody except family, close friends and game neighbours.

Instagram – got on the bandwagon early and stayed there. I love this app so much. I love taking iphone photos and sharing them with my followers AND with my social media networks. What I REALLY love lately are the celebrities on there. Getting a small glimpse into their lives is so interesting. I recommend: Jamie Oliver, Chris Lilley (who is an amazing photographer btw), Jessica Alba, David Blue and Kat Von D.

Tumblr – I didn’t understand it for the longest time, but now I love it for its quirkiness. Like twitter, the quality of what you see depends entirely on who you follow. I like to keep mine full of prettiness and memes. Haven’t devoted much time to it lately due to my crazy wedding frenzy.

GetGlue – I wanted something that I could use to check in to TV shows and participate in discussion and GetGlue was recommended. You can check-in to movies, books, music and “things I’m thinking about”. You collect stickers when you check into random things, or check into something a number of times. Apparently you can get these sent to you in real life via the post however I have yet to figure this part out. Thinking of deleting this one as superfluous to my social media suite at present.

I TRIED

Pinterest – it’s now incredibly popular but I started using Pinterest after getting engaged in January 2011 (does this make me an early-adopter?) after my friend recommended it for wedding planning. I recently blogged about my problemswith it and have now stopped using it. I haven’t deleted my account though, and am getting new followers and repins every day despite not being active. I am considering using it once more for business purposes in the future however.

Foursquare – I deleted Foursquare because of privacy concerns. And also because I literally never go anywhere interesting. If I do, I now use Facebook check-in instead.

Path – though it has such great potential, I had big privacy issues with this app (they had some negative media coverage regarding the way it was accessing your phone contacts to find friends). Also, despite me requesting it not to display my location, Path persisted in posting my suburb to my timeline every time I ‘slept’ or ‘woke up’. One thing I did adore about this app though was the moon rising animation when you ‘go to sleep’. It even showed what phase the moon was in that night. It also calculates how many hours you’ve slept, which is handy. That part was great. As an interactive social media platform it did have potential, with the ability to check into places and also share music, however I felt the simple addition of a few more check-in options like what book I’m reading or tv show I’m watching would make it truly unbeatable as a sharing app.

Google+ - ‘nuff said. Deleted as it was sharing my real name and I couldn’t figure out how to change it.

YET TO EXPLORE

Reddit – interested because the guy in the ‘Caine’s Arcade’ video described it as ‘the front page of the internet’. And lo, that is also their tag line. On my to-do list to check out, also because @wilw uses it.

LinkedIn – I understand this is for ‘professionals’? Has been recommended to hubby as part of his business strategy but I understand it also can help drive blog traffic.

Digg – seems to have been around forever and I keep seeing little Digg icons everywhere (like, for years) but have never really looked at it.

Delicious – again, keep seeing icons for sharing things on this site, no idea what it is

StumbleUpon – as above

Flickr – though I have an account, I rarely use it for social media purposes. I understand it has quite a strong community thing going on however

What social media platforms or applications do you use regularly? What ones have you tried and discarded?