These anti-social apps can restore sanity to your social media life
June 10, 2014: We’re told — again and again — that we need to grow our social media presences with more followers, more posts, and more links. But the truth is that having a large, unfocused network with too many friends and followers who aren’t going to engage (perhaps because they’re robots, not real people) is foolish — both from an algorithmic and a human perspective. Not only will the quality of the conversations suffer — you might just drive yourself a bit crazy.
Enter anti-social media apps. Some of them clean up your social network presence by paring unwanted followers. Others shield you from the unwanted surveillance of marketers and people you’d prefer not to associate with — online or in real life. One even goes so far as to reward you for not using your mobile device. They’re great for avoiding all kinds of social media burnout — which in today’s relentless 24/7/360 messaging environment — is a risk we all need to take steps to avoid.
JUSTUNFOLLOW
The perennial app for trimming your Twitter feed, JustUnfollow lets you scroll through your entire Twitter follower list and easily remove people who’ve you followed who haven’t followed you back. While the app doesn’t directly let you block Twitter followers en masse, it can make your feed more manageable, focused, and releveant. Paring the unresponsive from your Twitter feed is important for keeping up a a high Friends to Follow Ratio – a measure of your brand’s social exclusivity. JustUnfollow is a “Freemium” app, which means that the free version lets you unfollow up to 50 people in a 24 hour period; the paid version allows unlimited unfollows, which may be useful if you’re managing a Twitter feed for a brand.
SPLIT
A unique, straightforward app that uses GPS, Split lets you avoid members of your network that you really don’t want to encounter on the street, in a dark alley, or elsewhere in real life. The app uses location and status update data from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare to create a map of members of a designated “avoid list.” If and when the person you’re trying to avoid appears within proximity, the app conveniently maps out an “escape route” so you can get away in time. Split is in direct competition with Cloak, an IOS-only competitor, along with Hell is Other People, a FourSquare- based app.
WHISPER
The company behind this app is currently all the rage, having just won an additional $21 Million in funding from Sequoia Partners. By letting users anonymously share thoughts and opinions while messaging each other, Whisper is more of a “consequences avoidance” tool than a pure anti-social app. The app is the perfect channel for people to share stories of addiction, disease, or the simple daily struggle through life. According to the social media grapevine, Whisper is also being used as a clandestine hook up app.
TOCK
A truly interesting app, Tock is an app that rewards users for not using their phones. Tock blasts out an alert over a user’s social platforms and then measures how much time he or she spends not using their phones. The first user to use the phone loses the game; users are awarded points based on how long they stay away from their phones. The developers are now working with local Syracuse businesses to sponsor Tock events. Out of all the apps we’re reviewing, we feel that this is the most anti-social media app of them all.
THE TAKEAWAY FOR MARKETERS
As time moves on, anti-social media apps will certainly become more widely accepted. It’s not clear what the advertising possibilities are on these apps, because they’re designed to function as secure silos, not as networks where marketers are welcome. What is clear is that these apps are part of a growing social wave of people who want to take control of their social existences, customize them to their own liking, and choose the kind of experience they want to have when interacting with other people. Brands that want to be taken seriously need to respect users’ choices about where and when they interact. Those that do so will win, because the value of any engagements they make will be authentic and mutually consensual — the way all good human relationships need to be. Consequently, the value of such real engagements will increase, benefiting both user and brand.
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