Is Social Media still Social?

Social – Dictionary definition

1. pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations
2. seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.

I love blogging, I love the community involved and I love meeting people with similar interests. I even started my own blogging get togethers up here in the North for like minded bloggers to spend time together having a great time with their families.

I was in an article last year for The Sun newspaper talking about how the wonderful community on twitter helped and supported me during the dreadful time when we first found out that Elizabeth had cancer. They were there day and night, sending messages of love and support or just giving me someone to talk too. The support meant so much to me and really helped late at night when the lights were off and Elizabeth was asleep and all I could hear was the beeping of machines or the whispers of the night shift nurses.

However I have found once again that Social media does not always stand up to its definition. I have left closed groups on Facebook before, previously just quietly slipping away when I felt I could no longer watch the car crash happen in front of me. Today I left a closed group because that car crash involved me. An innocent appeal to share some love between bloggers was seen as a way of enhancing scores or stats or goodness knows what else. I have never been bothered by my stats. I have fabulous relationships with so many pr firms and brands that I can’t actually remember the last time someone even asked me for my stats.

A while back I used to run a weekly post that was called Share the Blog Love Sunday. I would choose great posts from the week and then write about them in a blog post with follow links. I am surprised that when I tweeted asking for posts I was not told then that I was affecting scores by adding follow links to peoples blogs. But saying that back then twitter was a friendly place. It really was a social place to be. You could even jump into other peoples conversations without seeming rude, not that you could do that in real life.

I used to love Social media. Now I don’t feel like being very social any more.