Do you actually use your accounts on LinkedIn or Academia.edu? If so, how do you find the time? I have blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. Facebook to communicate in town with civic and student organizations, Twitter because it is a convention, and blogs to think about work. I do not really read Tweets because I do not have time. I do read Facebook postings because that is how I get local news and announcements.
I know one is supposed to follow Twitter for news and Academia.edu for research, but when I would do this is my question. Especially when you can do “social” research on Zotero and it is less random, and I do not use Zotero as much as I ought to, and I spend more time on line and less in physical libraries than I should already. So I want to know: are LinkedIn and Academia.edu requirements, here in modernity?
Mostly, I just do not understand why one would go to Academia.edu for research when we are already hard pressed to find enough straight-up library time. Am I missing something, or is it that I just have enough social networks already, and enough academics on those social networks?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I know what you mean! I started an academia.edu account recently but only visited it once. I have such an Internet-overload with my blog that the idea of investing myself into another social resource is daunting. I don’t have a Facebook page or a LinkedIn profile. Or any other social network besides the blog. Still, it’s more than enough online activity for me.
As for research, I do it from my university library page and don’t feel like I’m losing out on anything important.
Maybe Academia.edu is best used to follow research you wouldn’t necessarily look for for your projects, or that’s in journals you don’t regularly peruse … more like a research cocktail party … I’m posting from Twitter, just to confuse everyone more!
Seriously, the biggest time-eater is still email for me. I haven’t even heard of academia.edu until now. Linked-in for me is like a ghost town, but I think it’s useful to non-academic professionals. I ignore it. I mostly use Twitter to sift for news/items of interest, morning and evening, instead of what used to be watching the news. I also have a set of blogs I read regularly via RSS feed to an iGoogle page, again, just a few minutes a day. I blog less than I used to, and sometimes play with Tumbler to collect images. Zotero is useful for saving research, but I haven’t used it to collaborate. I just dipped my toe back in FB recently, mostly to be connected with a few very specific people who live out-of-state and for events. I’m finding it refreshingly static compared to Twitter; I look at it for maybe five minutes on any given day. I don’t carry on very many conversations with other bloggers any more, which I used to do, because that started to feel like an obligation rather than a pleasure. Mostly I lurk.
FB, refreshingly static compared to Twitter, yes. Twitter is just not meditative enough for me and you have to decipher it. I think you have to have a different personality altogether than mine for it — it reminds me of tv, all these people jumping around, which is why I don’t have tv!