Love many of the points here:

Twitter seems to promote more negativity on all sides of a given issue. People tend to complain more, offer fewer solutions, and chastise one another more than they offer any alternative course of action. I don’t see how this can be a Good Thing.

On Instagram:

This results in a comparison game, which I do not think is a Good Thing, but it also allows us to see some positive things. And if you simply take one person’s positive for what it is then trying to rate it against something of your own, you end up with something nice. That’s a Good Thing, I think. Otherwise, the results are something like “you’re not good enough.” That’s not a Good Thing.

My thing with Instagram is that I kill time in the discover tab. No matter how much I try to stay away from it and keep it to only posting and interacting with people I know, I fail regularly at that restraint.

Which begs the question, why not just delete it? I know my coach would kill me though because I’m supposed to be using it to help promote my book The Art of Focus. Funny the book is about focusing and not being on social media.

Tom cites RSS as a good thing. That we can still further our reach in other ways outside of social media. I think that if we want to do that, we need to start interacting with other blogs again.

Yes, it’s a higher barrier to actually write something like this in response to Tom. I could easily favourite a Tweet or share something instead.

But quality conversation comes from actually writing about what he said. I refine my thinking and maybe refine his thinking on social media.

I’m certainly on the train of more RSS, less social media, and more linking and writing about what other people are doing.

Where do you sit?

3 responses to “Tom McFarlin – is social media good”

  1. Ricard Torres Avatar

    Totally onboard. Not only we should own our platform but we shouldn’t dance to these sites demands.

    It feels like we’re trowing away our time when writing well handcrafted posts only on social media.

    Blogs for the win!

    1. Curtis McHale Avatar
      Curtis McHale

      Yup. I’ve loved that many people are writing again.