When Did Social Networking Become a Job?

As I spend an increasing amount of time on social networks, I have begun wondering when social networking stopped being something that you do for fun and became a daily chore. In 2002 I received an invite to Friendster which at the time was an invite only social network. I was excited and immediately began to connect with all of my friends that I knew on the site. Then MySpace launched and all of my friends shifted to the new and cool social network and I suddenly re-connected with the same friends.

Soon after MySpace launched I tried creating my own social network only to have Facebook, the network that I now obsessively cover, beat me to the punch. This story is not about how I got beat out by a formidable competitor but instead about how soon enough social networking would become more of a task than an enjoyable past-time. LinkedIn was the beginning of using social networking professionally but at some point last year, Facebook also became the network of choice for many of my professional contacts.

Once that occurred, Facebook suddenly became a chore for me. Perhaps I am to blame as I set up a blog that was specifically about Facebook. Facebook became my job and as such it became party of my daily routine. I have a feeling that this isn’t only happening to me though and is now a problem that many of us face. Has social networking become a job for you? Is it something that you do in your free time or have you now forced yourself to use it for managing you business contacts?

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Michael Brito (Edelman Digital), and Tim Devane (bitly).   Register now.