benedikt, very good food for thought. I recently asked myself this same question "Maybe it’s a good idea to step back sometimes and rethink: how much are you giving and how much are taking from social media." - Mike Fruchter

And what conclusion did you arrive at? - Benedikt Koehler

You strike a chord, Benedikt. In asking myself the question, my answer is that I think I'm giving increasingly more, in that I'm contributing more comments and posting more links for more people to see, and I think I'm taking more because in turn I'm reading a greater number of diverse items and becoming more knowledgeable. Or am I? I'm not sure I'm actually retaining this new knowledge within my brain. Perhaps I'm simply compiling an ever-greater collection of links to places on the net where the information is stored, so that if I, or anyone else who "knows" me, ever need it again, we might be able to look it up reasonably quickly. So is it a balanced "give and take" situation? I rather think that at present there might be rather more "taking" than "giving" going on. But I can live with that, because it's giving me so much pleasure. Then again, addicts like me say that about all our addictions, don't we? - Bob Kingsley