Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Social networking annoyances

As PR consultants, most of us are on social networking sites. Speaking for myself only, I am on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo (which for some reason I have two accounts thanks to the recent merger with Comcast) and others. Most of the time I find these sites useful for networking. I've used to them to connect with long-lost clients but also to reporters, friends and family. Other times, they can be annoying.

Today I came across a recent PC World article that listed the Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances. As a user of social networking tools, I agree with Scott Spanbauer's list, but I decided to come up with a few of my own reasons:

  1. People read too much into things said on these sites. Simple: talk to the person if you are curious as to what something means. I've always said, "The world is not MySpace or any other social networking tool." Communication is one on one, not one to the computer.
  2. Why must I have multiple accounts? I know things exist like FriendFeed and other to combine accounts but I barely remember to check the weather daily, not to mention logging into a site very few people are on who I want to talk to.
  3. Why do some PR professionals use them the wrong way? As PR professionals, I know reporters ding us on bad behavior (Brian Morrissey of Adweek comes to mind). No one should EVER pitch a reporter using Facebook, in my opinion, unless you have a close relationship with that person and it's okay. It breaks something I think is sacred between PR pros and reporters.
I think that's enough to get me started. What would you add to this list if you could?

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