2013 Social Media Resolutions

As we look ahead to 2013 it's a good time to make a few resolutions and look back on our mistakes and achievements from the previous year. I pasted the "no social media" sign on this post because I didn't want to come out against any one social media site. It's also kind of ironic that I would post it here because blogs are considered a form of social media. My main gripe about social media is the staggering amount of time that people waste playing games and posting useless information.

During the past year I've wasted my share of time playing games on Facebook and I don't even have my own account. Facebook has infiltrated our culture to the point where their logo is on everything. It has become a favorite advertising platform for businesses because they can target their ads based on the information Facebook has collected. I've seen many social media sites come and go and people eventually grow tired and move on to something else. That hasn't happened yet, but you can see how social gaming companies like Zynga are struggling to keep users. One of my resolutions for 2013 is to stop wasting time on social media sites.

Web design has also become more complicated because of the social media aspect and smaller devices like cell phones and hand-held tablets that let you access the web. These smaller devices have unique web design requirements and more and more people are using them to search for information. I am also finding it increasingly difficult to draw viewers to a new website that may only have relevance to a local area. The low number of hits that a small business website receives is hardly worth having the website if owners are unwilling to spend the extra money to pay for online ads on social media sites to promote the website. As a result, I plan to reduce the number of clients I support to focus more on my own web design and app development projects in the coming year.