So you’ve joined up on Facebook and Twitter, and the contacts and friends are rolling in. The steady stream of updates has gone from fun to near overwhelming. Your in person friends are getting lost in the shuffle. However, you know all about the latest Podcamp now, and can tell where the next Pulver breakfast is at without even thinking. Is it madness? Too many contacts?
What’s a person to do in this situation? It’s time to trim down my friend. Stop; don’t balk now. You are moments away from relieving the stress of too many contacts. Too many? Yes, too many, and no arguing that there are so many interesting folks out there. Heck, I’m one of those.
Got your attention? Ready to cut down? But how, that’s the question. Who can you cut from your social networks? You can’t leave Aunt Suzie off right? Well how about Scoble?
It’s time to figure out who you’ll be benefit from following. Here’s a few tips to help out:
- Unfollow celebrity types that aren’t following you. This one will be the hardest for most folks to follow because of fear of missing out. Here’s a little tidbit; most of the folks are not just putting out their stuff on Twitter or Facebook, they also have a blog or blogs that they are posting too, often daily. Robert Scoble is an excellent example. He not only uses socnets, but all of his real productive work is show on his blog, FastCompany.TV, Ustream.TV and his KyteTv channels. If you want to follow him, follow him there.
- Unfollow all non celebrity types that aren’t following you. A little easier sacrifice to make for most of us. These are the folks that you’ve probably added because your friends have them as a contact, or because they are friends of the celebrity types you were following. JUST DROP THEM ALREADY! Apply the rule of what are they doing to move you along your path here. Chances are, very little.
- Unfollow companies on your socnets. Unless they are honestly engaged in two way conversation and you are honestly an active participant in that conversation, drop them. It’ll clean up your stream of plenty of stuff you weren’t probably reading anyway. Again, these companies most likely have blogs you can follow via RSS rather than the random Twitter or socnet update.
- Unfollow your prolific friends. That’s right, your friends. Question whether they too are engaged in conversation or just sending out tones of updates. Heck, I’m one of those sometimes. I’m very prolific on a couple of my socnets, and some of my friends have had to unfollow me because they can’t see anyone else’s updates or at least they are harder to find in the flood.
If after doing those four things you still have too many updates coming your way, then maybe it’s you that needs fixed. Get yourself some caffeine, a little ginseng boost and dig in. And maybe, just maybe take a reflective look and see if you are one of those that someone else might have to unfollow or unfriend.
Cheers,
Todd, tojosan just about everywhere, follow me if you dare
The Broad Brush 
I read ya. Too many socnets out there. But this is also a good thing as there is something for everyone. (So why can’t all my friends be on the proper one(s)?) 😉
If you’re not adding to my life I’m subtracting you…that’s how I decide who to follow. I used to have a hard fast never go over 200 people rule on twitter. When the number creeped up around the 300+ mark I found that the people I really wanted to follow got lost in the shuffle. So, last week I quietly trimmed 100 people from my list and I am back down to 188 people and having conversations with the people who matter to me.
:o)
AnnOhio
DNA – yes, why can’t we get our RL friends on and all in the same place, and off of the more spammy socnets.
Ann – thanks too for your comment. Yep, no reason to make a big fuss, just drop them. Folks would be surprised how many folks they don’t need to follow.