You’ve been Facebook culled, don’t be upset
If I was to make a prediction for 2013 it would be that it will be the year of social network normalisation.
You might of noticed you’re no longer friends with someone on Facebook, perhaps you go to send someone a DM on twitter and they’re not following you any more .. maybe you want to get rid of some recruiters on LinkedIn who keep messaging you… you’re bang on trend for 2013.
…and yes, whilst I’m relying on mostly anecdotal evidence I do believe there is a trend towards what I call social network normalisation.
For me this takes 3 forms:
- considered posting
- friend reduction
- network rationalisation
What are a few of the key drivers to these trends?
1) Awareness of the use of information from social networks is growing in the general population i.e.: twitter users being sued/arrested, greater police activity online, “private” Facebook photo use in the press…
This leads to more considered posting on social networks, with wider adoption of the old maxim “assume anything you post online, in any way, is public”.
2) When you combine this considered posting with larger networks, that now contain more business colleagues, family members and lesser known acquaintances, the logical result is to reduce the number of friends on that network or to post less, reducing the likelihood of over sharing some detail of your life to an inappropriate audience.
3) I’ve always been a strong proponent of doing a few networks and doing them well. The “wild west frontier” of social networking is mature enough now that you should be able to make a judgement on which networks serve which purpose for you – perhaps leaving some altogether.
- Do you need to check in on Facebook and Foursquare?
- Do the filters on twitter make Instagram obsolete or do you want your photo stream separate?
- Have you done a vanity search and found old stuff on google from MySpace? (Maybe new stuff…)
- Are you worried about who owns your images on Pinterest?
Aside from these kinds of user centric considerations, we’re also seeing an increase in decoupling from social networks to each other as they seek to build a business model (be that driven by acquisition or flotation) – Instagram pictures no longer displaying in-line on twitter, twitter messages no long sending to LinkedIn – these kinds of changes will make people further review their use as the ways they use the platforms evolve.
What do you think?
Image from this article on how to have a Facebook cull.
I think you’re spot on…BUT…I think this is only happening with a certain demographic of tech-savvy folk. The question for me is: will this trend propagate down to the masses?
Initially I didn’t think so, but, as more and more people I know in real life join Twitter and start blogs (my own perceived trend) I’m wonder if the answer to that is “yes”.
Time will tell.
I will be doing exactly that!
One of Google+’s advantages is the simple tailoring of who sees each post by placing a contact in one or more circles, e.g. Family v. The Office, and sharing the post with one or more circles. I suspect a lot of private posts are made there. On the other end of the scale, its Event post brings together all posts by attendees, e.g. photos, without having to have them in circles.
Will the unlinking of the various social networks lead us back into the bad old days of AOL users not talking to cix users not talking to deja users, or is there hope people will move to open social networks before commercial pressures taint the idea?
Although I’ve not shut it off, I’ve stopped visiting my Facebook account, and I’ve reduced my amount of twitter interactions. Interestingly, I find that I’m using Google+ more because of it’s circles.
Another post backing up the theory! This time from Gigaom
And another (very good one) from CNN