I’m not active in social media at all. I just don’t get it, although I don’t think I’m clinically ‘anti-social’. I don’t feel the need to remain connected to people who have moved out of my immediate life – co-workers from former jobs, high school or college classmates, etc. If I don’t see a person on a regular basis (at least quarterly), I tend to forget their face and name fairly quickly. Tools like Facebook have no appeal for me because the people behind the faces don’t appeal to me. Twitter strikes me as an absolute waste of time and electrons. Maybe it’s because I don’t think anyone I know would care what I had for lunch or what movie I saw, so I don’t care about those details for total strangers. Perhaps it’s because while I may respect someone’s body of work as an author or athlete, I recognize that doesn’t automatically mean I will enjoy eating what they eat or listening to their favorite musician.

I’m trying to determine if I’m missing something in all this e-interaction, or if it just doesn’t suit my life style. Someone earlier mentioned inviting the anti-social wallflowers to the dance. It doesn’t do any good if this particular wallflower doesn’t know how to dance in the first place. But it’s reassuring to know I’m not the only one asking the question.

As an introvert with a strong internal filter, I don’t think I’d care for a constant feed of unfiltered musings.

I’m a pretty strong early adopter and highly technical, but so far, I haven’t felt any desire to twit or to be twitted.

The reason I think it’s true is that I am somewhat into social media, plugged into mySpace, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Technorati, etc, read many blogs and even have my own. But I have no intention of using Twitter. It’s not just becuase almost no one in my social circle is on Twitter, but because I don’t really want a constant stream of my friends tweets and doubt they want mine. It’s just too much. Too micro. Occasional Facebook status updates seem to be plenty, and individual blog posts or image galleries with real content are much more valuable. I don’t consider myself or my large network of friends “anti-social” and some outright qualify as “connectors” and “mavens”, but we have little interest in Twitter.

The reason I think it’s too early to say for sure about the Twitter line is because of awareness. I know the blogosphere is all over Twitter, but I know many social networkers who use Facebook (or mySpace, youTube, etc) daily, but do not know what Twitter is. Again, these people are not “anti-social” by any means. They post comments and pictures every day and have hundreds of “friends”. But they only look at each others vacation pictures – and don’t read TechCrunch – so they don’t know about Twitter.

As a final note, I think the way to view the place of the “anti-social” in social media is as the pure consumer. Somewhat akin to a “lurker”. This person doesn’t have an account where they don’t need one (you an anonymously browse Digg or youTube, for instance), and where they do need accounts to get the service (StumbleUpon, maybe) they don’t build up friends and utilize all of the features, participating only with their general usage statistics.

Note: I of course mean “anti-social” like Denis did – not the true medical meaning.

Apps like Twitter lower the initial investment threshold to get someone out, online and contributing. Does it do it at the cost of quality? I dunno. I’m an early adopter on many things, but I haven’t seen the use yet of receiving a myriad of “I’m at the store thinking about bread pudding” texts over the course of the day.

I do know that it can be overwhelming to new users to put themselves out there. I’ll have to read up on Malcolm’s categorizations, but it seems that there are plenty of folks that may have things to contribute, and/or connections to help make, but haven’t found their “voice” yet in terms of a technology platform or medium.

I do think that there will be more social media-lite success stories in the future. Applications/platforms that help users get past that first hurdle of creating/aggregating content and get them out and contributing without having to throw themselves out there. In my opinion, there’s a lot of wallflowers that just need to be invited into the dance.

Most people don’t chat about RSS, but they download a BBC News Ticker, powered by RSS.

And in the same way, most people won’t be heavy Twitter users, but there are ways to use the service to help users.

An anti-social person is one who disregards the rules or social norms. All the rules of society are nice, but they are for other people. I have a nephew who is a classic anti-social person. He always works around society’s rules. He has landed in jail a few times.

He is also classic anti-social in that he is a charming person. (some would call him a con artist) He is constantly on his cell phone, on Twitter, and other social media because they allow him to make connections with other people who know how to work around society’s rules.

I prefer the term “anti-society” to “anti-social” but the American Psychiatric Association grabbed the term “anti-social” years ago.

I believe Gilbert H. expresses the thought better with the term “anti-technological.” Better yet, use the phrase “a person who prefers little if any social contact with other people.”

Picking up on Daniel’s point, there is this notion that most of us heavily engaged with the blogosphere are connectors – but is it useful to think about “what” these people were before blogs game them an outlet for connectivity? I could see an argument where it was through the adoption of this particular social media tool that a large number of people who may previously have been viewed as “anti-social” morphed into connector. This notion would tie back to (and partially refute) part of Avinash’s comment – rather than being hostile to blogs (and perhaps wikis, etc.), “anti-social” people could be eager adopters of technologies that allow them to connect in a way that’s comfortable to them. More on this in my next post.

The cost/benefit analysis Mike brings up is particularly interesting in comparing blogs to twitter feeds. I would argue the former carriers a HIGHER cost in terms of time required to create or digest the contents of blog posts… but the benefit is much higher (in being able to better articulate ideas, or see them explained more fully).

For example, with regards to 1 – I am not a luddite, but I don’t text because I think my cell plan is plenty expensive enough and I don’t need that functionality. I’m sure many feel the same way. As for number 2, I have a hard enough time keeping up with my feeds, and I don’t need more messages of less substance to go through. I simply don’t have the time.

The cost/benefit of the time I’d lose twittering doesn’t justify participation! For someone like Robert Scoble, who makes his living off this kind of stuff, it’s justified. For a social software to be successful, it will have to come out on the good side of a cost/benefit analysis.

As avid blog readers and writers I think everyone here at Wikinomics is either a maven or a connector. I think you can probably look to friends who might only be on one or two social networks rather than greedily slurping up dozens or hundreds of them like you or I.

Many of my friends and family use Facebook and little else to stay connected online, and so I’m rebroadcasting my blog on Facebook in an effort to get them engaged. More on that in my recent post: http://www.sharingatwork.com/2008/08/facebook-devourer-of-sites.html

As for as anti-social Web 2.0 users, we can’t expect every tool to “click” for every net-savvy media maven. I have tried, abandoned, and revisited countless tools as their communities expanded and the value inherent in using them exploded. Have you ever known someone to start an account, ignore it for a year or two, and then pick it back to contribute at full steam upon realizing that all of their other contacts are using it daily? That usage pattern can easily be misread as symptomatic of a larger disinterest when in reality the new tool in question just isn’t filling a need for everyone just yet.

Technology can only change so much of who we are.