Reda’s Social-Network Independent Pages

I’m sure some of you all read the NY Times article (In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop) but I wanted to add my two cents and that is… not only bloggers are the one affected by the "24/7 disorder"!!! It’s “every content producer” who ends up in some sort of system which is 24/7 and in a social-network everyone is a content producer! Internet addiction is almost an official mental illness now but the active participation in the tens of social services we have today (Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…) makes Internet even more addictive and makes anyone who’s “exposed” more at risk to this "disorder"

I think the whole experience is very addictive because is basically a positive feedback loop (very engineering view, I know ) and you can potentially end up in an "unstable" mental and physical state so watch out . You know how "greed and fear" drive the economies around the world? Well, I’ve been trying to understand what are the factors that influence the social interaction and basically I think it’s all down to "narcissism and control (of your data)". Each one of them affects each other and both can drive you nuts!

Personally, I’m not into social networks (although I used to be a big reader of feeds and I subscribed to way too many of them) but Flickr gave me a glimpse of how it could be and it’s something I want to stay clear as much as I can .

I have been a Flickr user for years but only recently I started enjoying photography and as good Web2.0 etiquette suggests I sent some of my pictures to groups and strangely I received some positive feedback about them. Arghh, two minutes later I was hooked! The Web2.0 Social Angel appeared and told me: "Congratulations, you finally entered the magical world of social photography". It went on for days! Then suddenly one day, I decided to put my narcissism aside and started living the real life
Actually, on the Flickr addiction problem, there is a nice picture in Flickr that nails it and you can find long discussions in Flickr’s forums too!!

So, my goal is now more than ever to prioritise and save time (and cost) as much as possible. So I tried to come up with some ground rules…

• First, attention/time: As usual I like the 80-20 ratio based on the old pareto principle, so now I try to give 80% of my attention/time to no more than 20% of the people I care. I would like to have a 48-hours day, but the reality is that my day is only 24 hours! I would like to enjoy the company of the entire world but the reality is that I have limited resources as well as limited time; I cannot clone myself and I don’t like everyone I met in my life as well.
• Second, how to interact: not all my friends lives in the same city I live in and that is why I used these web services in the first place. But, sometimes I wasted a lot of time on one service just to serve my curiosity and not to really communicate. So, no more "ghost" accounts, if I won’t seriously use it I won’t register for it.

I really hope it helps