Almost every day I spend most of my time on the Web, keeping an eye out for time saving ways to automate social media applications. This has brought me to the realisation that what once began as a way to meet new people while keeping in touch with friends and family - has now become one of the most powerful marketing engines that exists today.

With so much effort going into social media, there are literally hundreds of software programs and other online tools which allow you to automate the entire process. After a recent Twitter follow, I had a message come back to me saying "I really like you so much and decided to follow you" - now, I know for a fact that the person has probably never even looked at my profile - and as for liking me so much, I doubt that that person was even aware that they were now following me... but it's all part of playing the social media game.

So, of course, I'm not knocking it. I really love working as a social media assistant and finding new ways of developing business through this new fad, and from my point of view, there really isn't any other job I'd rather do, but I also find it a bit disheartening that it has lost its intended meaning - so to speak. We are all like little robots trying to promote ourselves and our businesses via a channel which was initially designed to be very personal.

Through microblogging, we can also keep each other updated on where we are. The average internet marketer will advise that you update your twitter account or other microblogging account around 10 times a day. So during the work day you can keep churning out "Tweets", saying that you are in the office, at home, or even on the loo if you want to go that far (Twitter works on your mobile too). But in the grand scheme of things, have you ever actually read all of the tweets from the people you are following? It's basically just a numbers game - if you're following 20,000 people, and each one of them posts 10 tweets a day - wouldn't reading your Twitter account alone turn into more than a full time job?

We basically post a link to all those followers in the hope that a small percentage will click our link - this can lead to new traffic, hits, potential affiliate sales, and maybe even a comment on your blog post - but the simple fact is, we do it because it works and we can generate money from our followers. So, is social media really all that social?