Blog Every Day in May - Blog 9 - Favourite Social Media Channel

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I used to love Facebook, seriously, I had it bad. Probably five years ago almost everyone seemed to be on Facebook and if you didn't log on regularly you'd not know where people had been, which relationships had ended or what events you'd been invited to. Plus, you'd not get to check what photos you'd been tagged in before everyone else saw them. Seriously, a week away from Facebook and the world would end. Well, not really...

Nowadays my Facebook log ons are primarily to play Candy Crush (I know!) and although I do scan through the updates in my news feed it's not very often I read something interesting. Admittedly, over the weekend I found out from Facebook that a friend was moving to China for six months, but that's very much the exception recently. It's noticeable that there seem to be many fewer photographs uploaded nowadays. More often than not it's friends liking other people's statuses or photos, generally I don't know these people so my interest in the minutiae of their lives is sorely lacking. When it's not the brigade of likers, it's the attention seekers that are still going strong, with their "Why does this always happen to me? :o(" statuses which when any foolish, kind natured soul takes an interest in, they are batted away with a, "nothing", or the promise of a private message. Aagghh! Luckily my most annoying Facebook friend seems to have demoted me to her 'restricted' list which is working brilliantly. Other key frustrations are declarations of love / birthday wishes to friends or family members who aren't even on Facebook and the cricked neck and eye strain you get from uploaded photos which either need rotating or are just so blurred that it's a mystery what you're looking at. Seriously people, please look at your memory card before you just upload the whole thing!

Nowadays, it's Twitter that takes up more of my time. I like being able to catch up on what people are up to with little snippets of updates, it's even become my go to place for news, whether it's national events or local travel news. I have to admit I'm not much of a Twitterer myself (although I've amassed almost 3,000 tweets), but love reading what other people post. There are a number of people whom I follow who I'm genuinely interested in and would love to meet up with.

There's a lot of truth in the saying which I see frequently quoted on Twitter, "Facebook makes you hate people you actually know. Twitter makes you love people you've never met."