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-I know them.
-They live in my state.
-We have similar interests.
-Are good Twitter writers.
Otherwise, I block the rest.
And, except for a few exceptions, I follow everyone right back.
This means invariably, that I tweet with people from all over the world that have my interests or are very eloquent, I learn and keep up with what is going on in those interests, and I keep up with my local community.
And my friend to follow ratio is pretty close 1:1.
I find that I am as networked as I want to be, and conversely am able to keep my sanity.
As the social media world grows I think we will being to see a dialing back of social activity and the member population shrinking into more niche groups. We can see the paradigm switch between Myspace to Facebook to NING. Niche communities will be the thing of the future (even if that future is one month)... :-)
If I am into these platforms for ideas, conversation starters, following people who I appreciate, then awesome. If I am into these platforms to share my ideas with a wide audience then also, COOL.
If all I am doing is playing a game (he who has the most ADDs on MySpace or FOLLOWS on Twitter or FRIENDS on Facebook wins) then is VALUE really being added to my life? Am I adding value to my users? Where does signal turn into noise?
Maybe the people are correct who predict that Web 3.0 will be a way to manage all the relationship potential that Web 2.0 brought us.
I keep up with friends, family and colleagues through other means. I agree Twitter is just a game to see who can get the most followers. But if I can get another dozen people to read my latest blog post, it's worth a few minutes of time.
i like the article about the NY Times put out where they talked about 'ambient awareness'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07aw...
it seems that this is 'how' these digital social networks help us. they allow people in our network to know more about what we do, read, think, say, etc ... on a daily, hourly, minute(ly) basis ...
the types of relationships we build online will never be like the ones we build with the folks we were in high school, college, work, church, flag football, (fill in your activity) with ... unless we take what we develop online offline.
i don't know that there is a correct answer or solution to all of this. it seems to all come down to the individuals needs, wants, uses ...
as far as pulling all these tools together ... oh man!! thats half the battle of all this. to many connections in to many places. just not manageable.
great post btw :)
--
http://twitter.com/franswaa
I'm back to well-chosen forums for social networking.
*How do you maintain connections with your network of friends?
I rely heavily on them reaching me. I make my profile as attractive as I can and let the bytes fall where they may...
*What features or tools help you to maintain these connections?
Google Reader and Gmail plus my instant Reader > FriendFeed > Twitter connection.
*What features or tools are missing that you feel could help you to grow your connections even more?
Artificial Intelligence.
~ Alex from Our Evolution
If any one tool could help manage networks of friends it would be a tool that aggregates conversations surrounding the same or similar topics. We have seen this happen with hashtags to a limited extent.
The main Twitter tool missing for me would be a 'personal comments field': somewhere to jot notes and reminders about that person: if we met & where, topics chatted about, birthdays, etc.
Personally, I think people are wired differently so they mix and match tools differently, which explains the varied answers. On Twitter specifically, my friends tend to message me direct when it matters, and we connect on more places than Twitter.
I do limit my connections on Twitter. It's the once place I tend to skew toward friends and communicators/related professions. There are some exceptions, but otherwise, my connections grows on other social networks.
Rich
I have set up similar requirements for LinkedIn connections to what Sharon has for Twitter. I am mainly interested in getting people into my network who can help me professionally. Despite this I am a member of an 'open networker' group, mainly as an experiment. I try to maintain a "75% known ratio", meaning that 3 of every 4 people need to be someone I've had a pre-existing relationship (at the very least, a meaningful email conversation).
One question I would love to get answered: where can I aggregate all of my comments from various blogs into a single feed? This would go far toward getting things organized. Any suggestions?
You could still have friendships with people from other servers, but you would be able to concentrate mainly on the people from your own server.
this is what I do in the situation you described:
i hardly add people I don't know to my friends list. those who wants to friend me who doesnt wanna be in real touch are ignored. this gives me real power in terms of usage of my social graph.
as to Twitter: I follow fewer people than i have followers. I try knowing them all even though its not possible, even in my small network.
other networks: what happens there is that i "copy paste" my graph when people befriend me. less work, i don't add people i dont know.
as to you- you will always have more followers than people you follow or friend yourself ,cause you are one but you are just one of the 5% of people who creates data on the net, you write a lot. the rest read and follow and these are the rest of the 95%.
bottom line: keep your graph to people you know. you can't do anything (and should do anything) with how people follow you. just keep being true to yourself.
I use twitter to learn, and I have learned so much from "eavesdropping" on people I follow. I will follow back anyone who seems human, posts about more than just partying and who posts primarily in English, since I don't read any other language.
I use Facebook more for "ambient awareness", and keep it primarily (though not exclusively) to people I have met in person.
LinkedIn is reserved for people that I would feel comfortable introducing to my boss and colleagues, though not necessarily an in-person relationship.
Now I'm feeling like I need something "in between", to keep up with people from twitter or blogs with whom I've had conversations, be they electronic or face to face. I may explore FriendFeed for that. I've been trying to track them in Batchbook, with mixed results. And i'm like some kind of "check in" reminder to reach out to those people once in awhile, and to see what they are up to if we haven't interacted in awhile.
I search for people that have a question or need help and support. Then, I connect them with my Trusted Resource of Clients, Strategic Partners and Alliances.
Somebody within my Twitter network was having a challenge with her website. I sent her an interview that I did with Dr Robert Joseph (www.GluLife.com). He talks about using open source content management system to build a website. It's a different approach.
Entrepreneurs can embrace technology and build and maintain their own websites!
Craig
www.budgetpulse.com
All kidding aside, as Corvida's partner-in-crime, she knows I limit the amount of people I follow for that very reason, and every so often I peek through and rmeove those that do not post or don't have content I want to see on a constant basis. While that does not mean that I don't like you as a person, it just means I use Twitter differently than all social activity. You cannot keep a close relationship with everyone by following thousands. Twitter themselves limited the amount one person can follow to 2k now right?
Best -- "reechard"
@"Reechard" - Once you go on a self-imposed exile on Twitter, you don't come back the same. I completely understand where you're coming from and it is a bit heartbreaking and frustrating to spend so much time and energy on a service, and then suddenly have all these problems with it.
@Tracy Lee - Maybe the depersonalization of it all is the real problem.
With all the limits that everyone is imposing, doesn't that just further the depersonalization process? Doesn't it get frustrating after a while. I know I've gotten to a point where sometimes I'll add people just because I don't feel like checking to see if they meet my "limits/requirements". Has anyone else found themselves doing this?
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/09/netw...
But that is time consuming and not fulfilling to have to ask each stranger who wants to be friends - now who are you? Why do you want to be friends.
I've leading a discussion about professional networking over at social edge and posted a link to this post.
http://www.socialedge.org/discussions/marketing...
On a serious note - quality before quantity.
I use different networks for different things. Facebook I use for people I know or have met. It's almost entirely personal, I update my status frequently but don't sweat it. For some reason my friends are quite interested in what I'm up to - and when I meet them I must admit being amused when someone says to me, offline, "oh, yes, I saw that on your Facebook update!"
My Linked In network is entirely professional, with past and present work and employement. I've met or have had several interactions with, all my connections... and I have just over 100. With Linked in I think that if I asked any of my connections for a recommendation they could give me one, and vice-versa.
I keep in touch with my connections via email.. and sometimes phone and meetings - depending on where they are.
Twitter... I have just joined and I'm using it to contribute and learn and for exposure;it will probably be mainly business. I don't "know" my "followers" or those I follow in quite the same way, but I'm impressed with the info they share. It's wait and see, but I'm not after hundreds of followers because I know I won't be able to keep up.
I'm thinking of trying Friendfeed, but haven't yet.
I can't think of any other tools I need... but I'm sure some will be invented ;)
I use LinkedIn for the people I've built an offline relationship with. I'm not looking for 500+ connections to people that may or may not assist in my endeavors or I may or may not assist in theirs. I will provide answers on LinkedIn but I'm not always looking to connect.
I don't see any of these tools cutting into my productivity, I see Twitter as a boost to my creativity I can asks quick questions and get quicker responses than some of the forums I belong to.
I don't have any solution, just noting the predicament you describe rings so true. Right now, I am mostly not following any new people unless they are incredibly compelling - which to me means they are unique than most of the people I already follow. Oh, and I follow poets, musicians, artists, writers, filmmakers, etc anytime.
Perhaps your name contains a seed clue...corvida - core vida - core life (spanish). Focus on core, prune the rest?
For instance, you could cut in half the number of people you're following on Twitter. You could limit it only to people you know, or only to those you know well, or only those who regularly trade tweets with you. Everybody else could still get your attention by typing @chrisbrogan anytime, so it's not like you'd be blocking them. But your incoming stream would be a lot more manageable.
In other words, not to point the finger but just as an observation, your experience of Twitter has changed based on actions of your own -- following a lot of people you don't know -- and could presumably be changed back by taking different actions.
When I joined Twitter late last year, more than once I heard that it was good practice (or even mandatory for good etiquette) to follow back everyone who follows you. I quickly discovered that this advice didn't work for me, because I got overwhelmed by the flow of tweets. So now I view my decision to follow as independent from the other person's decision to follow. There's no reason for me to get mad at, say, Merlin Mann for not following me back, and similarly I'm not beholden to follow someone else's tweets just because they're following mine. Indeed, I can be grateful for their attention -- and open in corresponding if they decide to trade tweets with me directly -- without falsely pretending that I share many of their interests.
All that to say this: sometimes I do come across a clear technological need in a tool -- a button or widget or whatever that would make it more useful. But more often I come across the need for me to think through my own practices more carefully.
If your main aim is to increase awareness of your own brand, then it may be worth continuing to add everyone (possibly worth outsourcing this to someone who can click the links for you and let you know if there are any particularly noteworthy new contacts).
However if your main goal is having a high quality network with a high signal to noise ration, then adding everyone will eventually become a problem.
Social Networks are great for increasing and maintaing the ability to connect with people -- but what for?
Authentic Networking starts with connections with people you like, respect, and have a real reason to connect with. To keep these relationships requires caring and effort vs. tools.
What the social networking tools are great at taking advantage of the adage that "nobody is as smart as everybody", what they are not great at is real relationships.
More on these topics:
Authentic Networking: http://azzarellogroup.com/desired-outcome/03-20...
The Power of weak connections: http://azzarellogroup.com/blog/2008/08/20/the-p...
I agree with you on so many points. With twitter I try to keep up with a select few who I have made an effort to get to know. I cannot know and be everything to everybody. It is IMPOSSIBLE.
I have a twitter checklist too but now it is getting a little hard for me now where people in other social networks want to add me on twitter and I have to remember from what network do I know them from.
I do twitter a lot and maybe that is why people want to add me because they know I am always on twitter which in reality is a real drawback.
I have halted my blogging for awhile to have a better strategy to approach all the requests that I am getting to blog or just read someone's blog post.
I am like you overwhelmed and this is when you have to set limits on what works best for you.
Further, I refuse to use my real professional contacts for people who I do not know at all. I have had some very bizarre requests from some asking me to help them to connect to others and I do not know who they are at all.
Thanks for a great post!
The way I filter everything is by subscribing to feeds of terms I search at search.twitter.com. So, I don't really follow people but conversations. This allows me to see and hear from new people, too.
I feel like we always look to the same people and listen to the same voices collectively. That's not bad, but I also want to hear some new voices, get some different perspectives. Following search terms helps me find some new people.
I also use search.twitter.com to search and follow via RSS a handful of people (about 20) who I actually know and want to read their Tweets.