The social network pruning series is a collection of brief articles that each cover a technique you may wish to use to keep your social networks at a more manageable size. The last two tips were #1: Full names only and #2: Eliminate cross-posters.
Social network pruning heuristic #3: Familiarity matters
If you maintain a profile on one or more social networks, you know all too well the time it can take to keep track of your friends’ updates, shared items, and conversations. It wouldn’t be particularly difficult to stay on top of this social news if there were 48 hours in a day, but it’s not likely that our calendar system will be changing in our favor anytime soon– as educated and intelligent computer users, our time is often more limited than our resources.
As a result of this crunch, it’s in our best interests to ensure we spend time on social networking sites efficiently. Yesterday, blogger Chris Brogan summed this issue up nicely in a post entitled, “Are You Living Consciously Online?” In it, he asks an important question (as I’m learning all great blog articles do):
How are you spending your time online? Are you making a difference?
It’s with this that I make my next recommendation for simplifying your social networks: removing individuals that you don’t immediately recognize or recall.
If you’ve spent a prolonged period of time on a networking site, you probably have a good idea of who the major players are in that community, as well as those that contribute meaningful content, participate actively in discussions, or post attractive vacation photos of themselves, depending on what you’re into. This means that if you scan through your friend list, you’re more likely to recall the contacts that are most meaningful to you because you’ve spent the most time looking at their updates and name. If you don’t recognize someone, take a look at a few of their previous posts and see if any ring a bell. If none do, this individual may be contributing to the noise rather than the signal.
In short, use how familiar you are with a contact to judge whether or not you should remain their follower. If it’s hard recalling anything meaningful they’ve contributed, chances are good the only thing they’ve been contributing is stress.
Just to emphasize the importance of keeping online contacts manageable, here are some great quotes from a discussion that got going on Pownce last night regarding meaningfulness on social networks. Hopefully these two individuals won’t mind me sharing their thoughts.
Mike Lewis recommends,
“Don’t lose control when it comes to these networks. I took a step back and made myself cut the noise. Its hard but it has to be done sometimes.”
Scott Phillips also adds,
“If someone has added me on Pownce or Twitter and the media posts far outweigh the typed posts, I ditch them, especially if there is no relevancy. I add and remove all the time and I have no issues with people that remove me. It’s all part of building a community.”
Without a doubt, keeping networks in reign is one of the key requirements of keeping them enjoyable. As these two super-users can attest, being overwhelmed by meaningless content isn’t something anyone is interested in. Unfollowing unfamiliar individuals on networks is one technique that can help.
