Managing Social Networking
Jason Calacanis, the entrepreneur everyone loves to hate, declared Facebook bankruptcy a couple of months ago. He was being overwhelmed with friend requests, and from my understanding, there is no way in Facebook to perform a mass add action to add all friends. Instead of spending more time than he has to add every single friends request, he abandoned the social networking site altogether.
I use a few social networking utilities, and while I feel social networking is fun, I have realized that some people do not use these networks responsibly. One of the original purposes of MySpace was to keep up with what’s going on with friends via comments and messages – real life friends and/or associates you actually knew. Facebook’s original premise was to create a network of people who attended your college, resulting in a mini universe of undergrads, alumni, and faculty/administration. Later, Facebook opened its doors and applied its formula to high schools and companies before opening up to everyone. As both sites increased in popularity, people began an obsessive crusade to collect as many friends as possible, which presumably is a popularity badge of honor. The mistake Calacanis and others make was in trying to friend everyone sending in friend requests.
Many feel obligated to friend everyone who sends in a friend request for MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, and other social networking sites. Most people don’t want to feel like they’re shunning anyone (sans spam or porn profiles) and therefore will add people they don’t know and probably will never talk to in the cyber or real world. For some circumstances, I can understand why adding all friend requests are beneficial if:
- You’re a band or musician
- You’re a celebrity with a public profile
- You have a web site and are using a social networking site for promotional purposes
If you don’t fall into one of those categories, then you should only accept friend requests from people you know; reject everyone else to avoid social networking exhaustion. Apply some of LinkedIn’s philosophy to your recreational social networking profile by keeping your network of friends small, exclusive, and filled with people you know in the real world and/or actively communicate with online. Unless you really care about what people you do/don’t know think about you or you fall into one of the categories mentioned previously, there is no reason to have a huge friends list filled with hundreds or thousands of people.
Keeping things small and simple should also apply for your personal micro-blogging profiles, such as Twitter and Pownce. Whenever I receive alerts for people who are following my updates in Twitter, I typically add them to my friends list if they are interesting after reading some of their updates. I don’t add every single person who chooses to follow me, and I’m very selective on the people I follow. I do not want to be exhausted by the number of updates I receive, which can be supremely annoying if you get updates on your cell phone. Only certain people’s updates come to my cell phone, and I read the remainder on the web when or if I have time. I also have kept my friends list pretty small and selective. I’m not interested in adding every person in the Twitter universe. Again, I’m interested in adding people who I think are interesting and not simply because they chose to follow my updates.
As for Pownce, I have two profiles: one that’s private for friends only and one that’s set up exclusively for this site. I’m not really selective with friends requests sent to my Pownce profile for WriteTilt. For now, I add anyone as a friend who sends me a friend request. My WriteTilt profile, after all, is my public face on the web when it comes to this site; therefore, I aim to accept all friend requests. However, I take the opposite approach for my personal Pownce profile. I only friend people I know and talk to; everyone else is left as a fan.
Social networking sites actually can be useful, but they can also take up a lot of your time. Try imposing a strict time limit on the amount of time you spend browsing other people’s profiles and/or reading comments or messages. Realize that you can’t read every single message or update in your friend’s profiles, so don’t even try to get all caught up. Also, avoid the void. Simply put, that means that you shouldn’t allow yourself to get too sucked into social networking to the point where it becomes your life whenever you’re online. Just like there is an Internet addiction, there is also social networking addiction where people’s whole worlds are centered on what’s going on with their virtual friends. Finally, if you’re feeling too overwhelmed with the management of your favorite social networking sites, commit social networking suicide and delete your profiles. I promise you, you will survive without a MySpace or Facebook page.