Webupon

Many social networking sites have a status updating feature allowing members to share with their friends what they are up to or what they are thinking about. These updates are limited to a certain number of characters. I will discuss annoying things people do in their status updates.

Pity Party

Some people feel the need to use the status update feature to throw a pity party. They constantly update with their frustrations in hopes that people will comment and tell them things they want to hear. (Ex. “No one ever wants to talk to me. Why was I even born!?”) It’s OK when people complain about something in humour but these people I am refering to do it in all seriousness. Usually, these people are attention seekers and feel they are not getting enough notice (comments) on their page. It’s sad, but true.

If you are one of these people, how do you avoid doing this? It’s simple. If you really are having problems and must vent your frustrations, do it in the blog or note function rather than using the status update. People will tire of it and simply ignore you. Your friends might set their preferences to ignore all of your updates so they don’t have to be confronted with them everytime they sign in to their account. Even worse, some people who do not know you well may go as far as deleting you from their friends list because they are annoyed that your updates pop up contantly on their homepage.  

Name Drop

Do not include other people’s names in your status update unless you are sure that they will be OK with it. No one likes to sign on to see that one of their friends is talking about them (no matter how innocently) in their status updates. The worst way of name dropping of course is in reference to personal matters. (Ex. “OMG, I feel so sorry for Cindy. Her dad died.” or “Cindy just broke up with her boyfriend. Are you OK, girl?”) Leave it to Cindy to announce this. She doesn’t need your help!

Constant Updating

No one, not even your friends, want to know what you are doing or thinking every hour of the day. If you update your Myspace of Facebook more than 2 or 3 times a day, chances are most of these updates are being ignored. If you are so addicted to status updating, you may want look into microblogging. Twitter is a popular, FREE microblogging site. Microblogging is identical to status updating because that’s what you’re essentially doing: updating people on your status. The difference is important. Twitter is used soley for updating your friends on what you’re up to while social networking sites are so much more than that. Let’s not confuse the two. And don’t fret; you can show your Twitter updates on your Myspace profile or in Facebook boxes.

Being Exclusive/Private Messages

It’s not nice to use your status updates to exclude people. Don’t use this feature to speak to certain people privately. (Ex. “Ash, Jen, Mary: can’t wait to hang out later! Gonna be fun!”) Ash, Jen and Mary already know this. It’s very tacky and people will feel excluded. You are being childish and showing off the fact that you’ve got friends. If you have a small group of exclusive friends you want to speak to, do it in a private message (most sites allow you to send bulk PMs.) No one likes feeling left out. It’s called a SOCIAL network for a reason. And if you feel that you don’t need to interact with certain people on your friends list you should step back and evaluate the meaning of “friends.” Most people have users listed under their friends list that they don’t actually know. This is a big NO-NO! It’s completely pointess. If you’ve never spoken to the person, then you should remove them.

Nonsense

Make your status update clear, soemthing people can understand. Inputting a single word gets old. I’ve seen a lot of people do it. Why? Or some people opt to write a string of random words. It’s not entertaining. It’s annoying. If you don’t have something to say, don’t say anything at all. It’s not required that you constantly have something in your status update.

Final Advice: Don’t be a pest! If it annoys you, it probably annoys other people. Just don’t do it.