Unfunctionality and the Overshare

By: Julie Kucinski

Posted on 06/23/2010 - 9:20am | From the Consumer Culture Blog

I was reading an online article when a new bit of non-functionality popped up.

“One friend read this.”

He did not recommend it, post it, nor comment on it. Did he like it? Hate it? Accidentally click on it? Who knows. All I know  is that Herb was there.  And Herb didn’t even tell me he was there—HuffPost felt the need to.

That meant it was talking about me too, tattling to my network that I’d read about body-painted porn stars playing soccer at the World Cup. Before I could reflect on the impact to my online image, my phone dinged.

 A friend was at Walgreen’s. FourSquare told me.

Call it TMI for social’s sake. No wonder we’re more distracted than ever.

The overshare can be helpful: Mayors get free drinks. My freelance competition tells me exactly where it’s working. One guy’s repeated check-ins led me to a NYC taco truck. Delicious.

It can be annoying: No one wants their brand or content to elicit a “who cares?” (Sorry, Walgreen’s.) 

In the race to social, everything is increasingly fb-connected, hashed, and checked-in. Yet in a recent survey, some users reported they didn’t really know why they used some of these functions. They just did.

As marketers and makers, we need to discern between engagement as an actual value-add versus another whistling bell. Or risk being turned off.

This is the other side of online privacy. Americans aren’t all that concerned about the sanctity of our own info. But increasingly, we want to manage the firehose aimed at us.

Filtering is the new curating is the new sharing.

For $15, the computer app Anti-Social blocks social media sites for pre-determined time periods. “With Anti-Social, you’ll be amazed how much work you get done when you turn off your friends.” And your brands.

 If I buy the app, maybe I’ll share it on blippy. Not that you’d care.