I say "may have been wrong" as the jury is still out on this for me, but ever since Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield started using Twitter to promote the activities onboard the International Space Station, I now realise that certain social media services don't just have to be about idiots informing their friends about when they are watching TV, eating a kebab, or taking a dump.
Now sure, "noise" such as this does occur; in abundance - and unfortunately it is inevitable - but I'm beginning to think that if used intelligently (and with discrimination) social media such as this might have some value. Especially since a limit of 140 characters doesn't provide enough space to post anything other than a brief comment and a weblink to something outside the site that might be worth investing some time exploring.
I will, however, continue to steer well clear of Facebook. The fact that it is an egocentric closed loop system created for the purpose of aiding governments/corporations to data mine, predict trends, and influence the things we buy and the way we vote, is reason enough for me to leave it well alone.
In the meantime, for anyone interested, you can follow media underground on Twitter by clicking on the image below (I almost feel ashamed of myself for having succumbed to this after bitching about it for years):
If the time invested in it outweights the intellectual return, then the account will be shut down without notice. I am hoping to be proven wrong on this however, and will happily admit so if I am.
media-underground.net