Time spent on social networks and the like - I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours

After having fallen hugely behind on browsing my Facebook newsfeed, Friendfeed, etc., I decided to see just how much time I had been spending during those “on top of it” days… and, by extension, how much time it’d take me to keep up each day.

Around 10pm last night, I “cleared out” my Reader, and picked a stopping point in Facebook and Friendfeed, so I could start fresh tonight (Monday) and see just how much would accumulate in 24 hours… and how long it’d take me to get through it.

So here are my numbers:

• Facebook:  Browsing (and commenting a bit) on a filtered newsfeed of one group of 270 friends:  20 minutes
• Friendfeed:  Browsing (and commenting/liking a bit) on a selected group comprised of about 80 friends:  8 minutes
• Twitter:  Browsed through unfiltered/ungrouped list via Brizzly (happy to offer invites to the first ten people who contact me):  12 minutes.
• Reader:  Browsing through my ??? feeds (and checking out a few original pages + adding a couple comments):  28 minutes (”???” because Reader never was able to load up anything when I clicked on “Manage my subscriptions.”  Bummer!  But I’m guessing I have over 200 feeds, of which probably 100 are updated at least weekly)

Just a bit over an hour.  Not that bad, right?  Except when you realize a few very important things:

• This is more than an hour every single day, including weekends, holidays, vacation times, etc.
• Worse yet (and more importantly), this does not include my personal e-mail, which I estimate would take me about an hour daily in and of itself to read and appropriately reply to messages.
• Nor does this include Wave.  Or Techmeme.  Or online News.  Or really anything else in the vast online world.
• It certainly doesn’t include the time I should be spending composing thoughtful e-mails to my Grandpa, to my friends near and far, and so on.  500 or so contacts in my addressbook… people that I care about.  If I e-mailed each one just once a month, that’s more than one substantive e-mail every day (in addition to the other replies).
• And it certainly doesn’t include corporate (work) mail and related stuff, but that’s well beyond the scope of this inquiry, in which I’m trying to pin down this...

How much of my free time do I spend (or would I have to spend each day) on “keeping up” with friends and news online?


*  *  *

Well, now you know, or at least have an idea about my time allocations. 
Where does your time go?
- How much time do you spend each day on Facebook, Twitter, etc.?  (Not sure?  Try what I did, and actually time it!)
- Is that more than you thought?  Less than you thought?  Does it make sense for you?

Curious to hear your numbers and your feelings on this…

[Edited at 1:18am October 13 to add: Twitter stats]

Amazon, inexplicably hampering its most loyal customers

[Note:  Links below are affiliate links, so if you click and buy, I make money.]

I have bought hundreds of items from Amazon  (yes, I’m an Amazon Prime member, surprise surprise :-P)

Some of them I’m particularly fond of and want to either repurchase or recommend to a friend… but I can’t do easily because Amazon won’t help me.  You see, I’ve not been able to figure out any way to search through my purchases; it seems I can only browse by year (and paginatedly browse at that… ack!). 

I bought an amazing compressible travel pillow (below) a while back that I absolutely love, and I wanted to encourage my parents to get it for their upcoming trip to New Zealand :

[oops, pillow seems to no longer be listed on Amazon, and graphic was just showing a generic Amazon ad.  Blech!]

...but couldn’t find any sane way to look up the product. 
- I tried doing an Amazon search for “travel pillow” but there are hundreds if not thousands of travel pillows in their store.
- I then tried searching through my gmail (where I get my Amazon order receipts) for “travel pillow” but that didn’t turn it up.
- Somewhat randomly, I then searched Amazon for “orange travel pillow” and that did the trick.

Amazon, why do you make this so difficult for your active customers?  Why not a simple search box in the My Orders screen?

Edited on November 8, 2009 to add:
Looks like Amazon no longer sells this pillow.  Bummer!

Truly stupid Facebook status updates

One of my favorite newsweeklies, The Week, has a weekly competition where they solicit various entertaining submissions on goofy name ideas or lists.

A few weeks ago, highlighting the crazy case of some Australian kids Facebook-status’ing that they’d fallen into a well or something like that, they asked for some other ideas of truly stupid Facebook updates.

Well, I submitted a handful… but clearly the editor of this contest lacks good taste, ‘cause she didn’t pick any of mine :(.  So, for your edification, I’ve included them below :-D

—-
1) “OMG, I can’t believe my stupid teacher is reading my Facebook feed!”
2) “Honey, I think I might be pregnant. Is it yours?!”
3) “Having sex. BRB in a minute.”
4) “Honey, could you please get the remote for me? I’m in the bedroom.”
5) “OMG, DID I JUST POST THAT? THOUGHT IT WAS SEARCH BOX! HELP!”
6)  “My darling Jennifer, will you marry me?”
7) “How do I post a status update?”
8) “Unsubscribe!”
9) “I am Mobutu Rumppole, a Nigerian Prince…”
10) “Just got spider bite. Fingers swelling pretty bad, hardto type, any ideas on what I sh”