Social media is dead (please share this with your friends)

I had this great idea for a blog post today about how social media is dead. But before I wrote it, naturally, I had to check Facebook. It seems I’d gotten friend requests from 16 friends of friends, none of whom are actually friends, along with 20 news updates, none of which were actually news. Also, Facebook had changed its user interface. Didn’t the company just do that last week?

Then, of course, I had to quickly check in on the 1,375 Twitter peeps I follow. My last 140-character bon mot had been retweeted by four people I’ve never met, thus validating my miserable existence. Also, Heather found her lost cat, Justin wishes he were wearing shorts, and Tom is linking to a blog post by Shel Holtz titled “8 steps for managing social media overload” (I may have to read that some day, when I have time).

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I was finally ready to launch into blog-writing mode, but while glancing at Gmail I noticed that 37 people had added me to Circles on Google+, most of them men with cartoon avatars and foreign-sounding names. I put them all in my custom “people I wouldn’t be able to pick out of a police line-up” circle. It felt vaguely unsatisfying.

A quick run through my inbox revealed that I’d been friended by five people on Foursquare. Three of them I knew, two of them I actually liked, and one I’m pretty sure is stalking me. Four people I used to ride silently with in elevators three jobs and 15 years ago wanted to connect on LinkedIn. Three of my smart-aleck answers on Quora had been flagged by administrators for not being pompous or boring enough.

Two people liked a restaurant review I’d written three months ago on Yelp, though I don’t remember writing the review or even eating at the establishment. Apparently it was quite tasty — the food, I mean, not the review.

Six more people added me to their networks on BranchOut, so I felt compelled to add them back, even though I still have no flippin’ idea what BranchOut is or does, nor do I want to. But it felt rude to ignore them.

And that’s not counting the updates from Plaxo, Bebo, Slashdot, Klout, StumbleUpon, and the 3,297 other Web 2.0 sites I signed up for at one time or another for one reason or another. I think there may have even been one or two messages from MySpace in there.

Wait, where was I? Oh right, the death of social media.

It seems Google+ is already dead. We know this because Slate’s Farhad Manjoo has just written its obituary. He says G+ is dead because despite signing up 40 million users in three months, there’s no there there. Also, its traffic is stagnant and the three biggest Googlers in the world (Larry, Sergey, and Eric) hardly use the thing.

I immediately added Farhad to my G+ Circle titled “bloggers who enjoy writing premature obituaries.” But part of me hopes he’s right — and that whatever deadly social media disease G+ has contracted is contagious.

Thanks to social networks, I now know more about the lives of complete strangers than I ever thought possible. But it’s taking so much of my time that I no longer have a life to share. In a frantic effort to not miss anything, I end up missing most everything.

So that’s it. I can conquer my social media addiction, I just know it.

In fact, starting today I’m turning over a new leaf. I vow to stop spending so much time on social networks. Right after I finish tweeting, updating, +1’ing, and slashdotting this blog post.

Are you overwhelmed by social media? Confess your excesses and post your coping strategies below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Social media is dead (please share this with your friends),” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.