Walk with me through a brief history of the way social media took over our lives, and how you can take some of that time and attention back:

Facebook

When Facebook started to get big in 2005, it was still just a way to keep in touch with friends. It didn’t have a News Feed, it didn’t have apps, and hell, it didn’t even have photos! Cut to today, when people are using Facebook as a platform for gaming, for business, and for marketing. There’s only so much time you can spend deleting Farmville invites and looking at pictures of your friends’ babies.

My suggestion? Make Facebook real-life-friends only, and don’t feel bad about hiding particularly spammy friends from your news feed. If you feel you have to use it for business, get a fan page. Search userscripts.org for some of the many ways to hide Facebook ads, sidebars, apps and invitation.

Twitter

Twitter took off amongst the early-adopter set back at SXSW ’07, and officially became an almost-Facebook-sized part of the national consciousness when Oprah talked about it on her show last year. It was initially a way to meet up with friends and talk about what you ate for lunch, but now normal users are following hundreds of people they don’t know and trying to market their web-based crap to strangers.

If Twitter’s become totally unmanageable, you should either make some tough calls about who to delete — nothing personal, but a good friend doesn’t always make a good twitterer. Split work and personal accounts using one of the many Twitter clients that support multiple accounts and groups (Tweetdeck is one of the most popular). Just because you have 1000 followers doesn’t mean you need to make Twitter useless to you by following all of them back.

Google Buzz

Oh, Buzz … it’s so new that nobody really knows what box to put it in. Thankfully, Google turned off the auto-follow feature, so users now have more control over who they’re reading on Buzz, but you could find yourself oversubscribed … especially because people are feeding their other sites into Buzz.

Don’t do that. Let me decide whether I care enough to follow you on Twitter, Flickr, Reader AND Buzz … don’t make Buzz into a spam-tastic catch-all. You may want to have a talk with any friend who’s clogging up your Gmail account by connecting every social site he can think of to his Buzz. You may also want to decide what place Buzz has in your life: is it just another Twitter? Is it Tumblr? Is it Foursquare?

Of course, this is difficult when Google doesn’t seem to know what Buzz’s purpose is, other than getting Google a piece of your precious attention. And, make no mistake, your attention is precious. If someone is trying to take too much of it on a social site, unsubscribe from them. If keeping up with something like Buzz is causing you more stress than enjoyment, turn it off. It doesn’t have to be personal.

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to The Morning News, among others. You can also find him on Twitter.

Photo credit – wolfraven

You’ve heard this a million times: the first step is admitting you have a problem. A couple of days ago, I realized that I had some difficult deadlines coming up before the end of the month, and decided I couldn’t afford to devote so much time to social networking. I closed Tweetie and took it out of my dock. I deleted my Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr bookmarks. I moved my Twitter and Tumblr iPhone apps to the very last page on my phone. I made a couple of quick announcements so that nobody would take it personally, and I dropped social networking for a week.

It’s been two days so far, and I’ve noticed a definite uptick in my productivity. Without the social bookmarks and apps there to click when I don’t have a plan, I find myself clicking on the dashboards of the blogs I write for, and getting work done instead. In fact, I turned in twice as many words yesterday as I normally do. Was Twitter a bigger drain on my work than I had realized?

I think so, but I also don’t think it’s as bad as it seems. A general lack of focus can manifest itself in a lot of ways, and social sites just happen to be some of the closes distractions at at hand when you work on the web. Getting rid of the option to check them unconsciously was a good step. Much like turning off alerts and badges for incoming email, removing bookmarks and social apps means you have to make a conscious effort to check those sites. Checking 3 or 4 or even 10 times a day might not hurt your productivity, but checking hundreds of times certainly will.

I don’t think the cold-turkey approach to dealing with these sites — which, after all, connect you with friends and work contacts — is the best one, but I’ll try to stick with it until the full week is up. I’ll report back when it’s over to let you know how it went.

Meanwhile, let us know about your experiences with social networking sites and productivity in the comments.

Jay is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA. He blogs about software for Download Squad and contributes interviews to Geek Monthly magazine, among others. You can usually find him on Twitter, but not this week!

Photo Credit — left-hand

Once you have synced your Twitter account with Task.fm (can be done on the Settings page in your members area) you will see an option to set Twitter as the reminder format.

On the reminders page, a Twitter icon will be visible, that allows you to set the reminder format with one click.  You can also choose Twitter as the “default” reminder type in your settings panel.

So if you’re a Twitter addict, you now never need to leave to stay organised!  Check out this squidoo lens on Twitter Reminders for more details.

p.s – This was a user requested feature!  We listen to all your suggestions so keep em coming.

Don’t have a Task.fm account?  Grab a free account today at www.task.fm

Clean New Interface

With the 1.0 release we have tried to really focus on speed. Being the “worlds fastest reminder tool” is not just marketing spin.  Its what we do.  The new interface is easier to use, contains a whole lot of new shortcuts and is easy on the eye.

Twitter Integration

This is the big killer feature in 1.0.  You can now create reminders right from Twitter.  After syncing your account with Task.fm, you can Direct message us with your reminder.  For example:

d @taskfm meeting with bob next Tuesday at 10am

Free Account Changes

Based on user feedback, we have scrapped the existing credits system and replaced it with free and pro accounts.  Free accounts come with unlimited email reminders + 15 sms/phone calls every month.

Pro Accounts

Pro users will get an ad free interface and 100 sms/phone calls a month.  Of course you also get unlimited email reminders.

Improved To-Do Lists

I think we’re close to coming up with an interface which will make the to-do list feature in Task.fm absolutely killer!    We have completely redesigned how you add tasks to your to-do list.  Its now faster and requires no page reload.

Via SMS

Changing how you receive a reminder in the old version required you to either change the default or edit a reminder.  Now you can change the reminder type using the “via”.  For example the following will create an sms reminder

remind me about meeting with bob at 4pm via sms

You can also change the reminder type from your members area by simply clicking the icons associated with each format.

Secret Password

A user requested feature – when creating reminders via email, you can now setup a secret password to enter in the subject.  This is optional and can be created on the settings page.

We Need You

As always we need your feedback on what you would like added or changed on Task.fm.  We really do listen to all your feedback.

So what do you think of the new release?