How social media tried to disrupt my Easter

Alex’s Agenda is the weekly column from the front-lines of the future by The Memo’s Editor in Chief, Alex Wood.

This weekend I learned Facebook doesn’t like being left out. Like millions, I set my out of office and left the city for the Easter break.

Inspired by Kate Unsworth, the It Girl of mindfulness, I turned off my notifications and treated myself to a weekend of digital disconnection.

I did allow myself one concession: my iPad, but made sure social media was very much off the menu.

So imagine my surprise when I picked up iPad late on Good Friday and found this:

“Do you know Vikki Chowney?”
“Slide to spy”

Why yes, I do. Well… We’ve met once or twice years ago. She happens to be the best friend of our publisher, Sarah Parsonage. But I haven’t seen Vikki in years in person, unless Facebook knows something I don’t…

There’s a whole lot of wrong happening here

1) Holiday or no holiday, I block almost all notifications including Facebook on my iPad. I disconnect for one whole day and Facebook tries to dig its claws back in?

2) It’s 9pm on Good Friday. With all the money and brains in the world, how did no human at Facebook flag that this isn’t the time for me to start broadening my social network?

3) Don’t even get me started on the creepy “Slide to spy” line.*

It’s not fair for me to point the finger of blame exclusively at Facebook, this neediness trend is taking over all social media and is driving us all mad.

Finding new ways to annoy

Twitter’s equally as desperate these days with “your friends are talking about X” alerts and how could I forget Linkedin, the wet-dream for people in public relations and recruitment.

If you haven’t already heard, Linkedin is no longer the darling of the financial markets, with its share price recently falling by almost 50%. So like many a Silicon Valley giant, Linkedin started desperately seeking those lucrative growth metrics by finding whole new ways to annoy its users.

I recently “celebrated” my work anniversary here at The Memo. To the hundreds of you that congratulated me on the occasion – thank you, I appreciate the thought, but that one click “like” on my update resulted in hundreds, yes hundreds of spam messages filling up my inbox, all in the name of propping up Linkedin’s pageviews.

Let’s not forget, these aren’t public services, they’re businesses that need to make money from our time. But a line has been crossed, we were always the product, but now these networks want our attention with little regard for us as individuals.

When did social media become so antisocial?

* Regarding the “slide to spy” on Vikki notification… It turns out this creepy use of language was my fault. Ahead of my trip back home to the Westcountry I changed my Facebook to “Pirate English” which changed “slide to unlock” to “slide to spy”. Still creepy though.