This weekend I realised that I hadn't tweeted since mid-March, haven't actively posted to Google+ for almost a month and only really used Facebook to see what's going on and to look after the shop's page.
I don't really know what's caused this drift away from the world of online networks.
It might be that when I'm in work I'm too busy to check my phone (and anyway when I'm down in the basement there's no signal, unsurprisingly), and when I get home I'm not really in the mood to trawl through pages of other people's news.
Friends Reunited
This was probably the first real social network seen in the UK. Offering people the chance to reconnect with school friends, they were successful in allowing people to find former school friends but charged a membership fee to allow you to make contact.
I abandoned the site and deleted my account completely not long after it was bought by ITV as I felt it was offering me nothing.
It's now been revamped by BrightSolid, the same company that runs Find My Past and the 1911 census, and offers all functionality for free as a UK alternative to Facebook.
Just before Facebook there was a short-lived phenomenon in Aberystwyth of XuQa. It was a university based social network pretty much the same as the early days of Facebook but, crucially, it allowed people to comment anonymously. This led to it being used to abuse people, lecturers and departments to the point at which Aberystwyth University blocked the site from their computers, pretty much killing it off in the town.
Apparently Xuqa's still going, after many changes in identity, and is now some kind of social network/gaming hybrid.
Anyway, Facebook is now the default social networking site for the world to the point where 'facebook' has become a verb.
My major turn-off with Facebook is all the shit apps and games that are on there. No I don't want to build a farm, shoot zombies, or play scrabble.
At one point I was genuinely about to walk away from Facebook, but I couldn't as I took over the running of the Facebook page for work. It's probably going to be a long time before my Facebook account gets deleted.
Google+
I had really high hopes for G+. In a way I still do love it, but not enough people have made the move to become involved with it so, unfortunately, I feel the site is going to fail as a widely used social network and become a more niche social network (ie. a site for geeks).
I still hope that I'm proved wrong and it'll suddenly flourish and, being as G+ is linked in with all my other Google stuff, I won't be abandoning this profile just yet.
Foursquare
The idea is simple enough. You use your mobile phone to tell other people where you are. At the same time as allowing nearby friends to find you on the off-chance they might join you for a drink or whatever, you earn points for each check-in and, if you check-in to a venue more than anyone else, you become 'mayor' of said venue.
I enjoyed it for a while, but it got tedious. Frantically trying to find a mobile signal so you could earn your next step towards mayorship was more hassle than it was worth so I stopped caring. I haven't checked in since the beginning of March and I don't miss it so that's probably another account I could close.
Twitter's a strange one. I used to use Twitter a lot alongside Facebook as two separate streams for my thoughts.
Facebook was for thoughtful comments that I wanted to share with friends and family. Twitter was for my more random thoughts that perhaps didn't mean very much but I needed to get off my chest or out of my head. I still have random thoughts but I either disregard them after thinking them or actually tell someone what I thought.
I kind of miss Twitter more than anything else purely because of that unloading of random thoughts. When I posted a 'hello again' message to Twitter last night, I had a response "I guess you're just having too much fun in real life :-)".
Maybe that is partly the case, but then after moving down to Pembrokeshire I'm also nearer to (most of) the people I used social media to keep in touch with.
A side effect of this is that I'm falling out of touch with people on Facebook, Twitter and even WhatsApp that I used to talk to a lot but just don't anymore because I'm not sat in front of the computer as much.
My social media future
I think I'm going to have to get myself back online a little bit more. My friends lay online and offline, and fall outside of Pembrokeshire too. I feel like I've neglected those friends the most by not being online to chat so here's my plan... I know I'm going to be busier this summer with work and little projects of my own, but I'm going to do my best to be involved with my wider circle of friends that little bit more and to say hello once in a while because, as I found out earlier today, saying hello to someone I haven't spoken to in a while puts a massive smile on my face.