How to fail at social networking

by Volker Weber

Follow this simple step-by-step guide:

  1. Build a large collection of contacts. Put everyone in the same box.
  2. Register for a social network,
  3. Invite everybody from your collection.
  4. Do not share any original thoughts. Instead like, plus, or comment with a one-liner. Fill your stream with automatic posts from feeds that do not require thinking. Foursquare is a good candidate. Pinterest is the latest one.
  5. Accept all incoming contact requests and follow back everybody.
  6. Connect to as many people as possible and put them all in your collection.
  7. GOTO 2.

You will now follow more people than people follow you. You will not have shared anything meaningful. You will be unable to gather any interesting data from your massive inbound streams. Nobody else has as many imaginary friends as you have. And none of them cares.

The algorithm does not terminate. Welcome to social networking hell.

Comments

I wanted to share this but it was going to be ironic...

Serdar Basegmez, 2012-02-14

Did you have anyone in mind as you composed this blog post? ;o)

Darren Adams, 2012-02-14

Certainly so. A whole flock of them.

Volker Weber, 2012-02-14

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