My interview about unfriending and unfollowing

I was interviewed earlier today over at Haligonia.ca about unfriending, unfollowing, and managing your social network contacts. Please check out the video here.

Thanks for having me on the show, Giles!

My "Unfriend Someone Today" PodCamp Presentation

Sunday was Halifax's first PodCamp, and yours truly held a discussion on how and why you should unfriend people.

You can watch the full thing here in five parts: http://vimeo.com/album/60055 (thanks to @paulwesson for recording and uploading!)

And @philswinney gives a great review of it on his blog, along with a summarizing video: http://blog.philswinney.com/?p=128

What is social media?

I've recently heard social media defined as a websites like Facebook, Reddit, Digg, Stumble Upon, and the like, as a method of simply driving traffic to your website.

But that's ridiculous.

That’s like saying the definition of transportation is “vehicle.”

Social media is not its tools. Social media is a space and a mind-set, not a list of social networks.

The goal of social media should not be to “drive traffic."

It should be to increase sales/conversions/awareness/your real, end goal. While there may often be a causal relationship between them, simply increasing traffic isn’t the end goal. Sending qualified, interested people to your site will probably lead to you realizing your real goal, but it’s not the goal in itself.

If a client told me their goal was just to “increase traffic” then I could say, “Okay, let’s start spamming some people. Let’s try to trick as many people as possible into stumbling upon your site as we can."

Of course that sort of thing would get me fired. Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization should be focused on getting the right people engaged with your product/brand. Not just about getting eyeballs on the page. That’s a terrible goal.

But we interact with and use social media solely through things like the above-mentioned websites, right?

Apple zealots spreading the gospel of Jobs to their coworkers are participating in social media. And that doesn’t require Facebook.

If I asked you to define how transportation worked you wouldn’t start by saying, “well, the internal combustion engine…” Social media is bigger than its tools, and defining it by only listing the tools that facilitate it doesn’t make sense to me.

There's something like a venn diagram out there, where digital tools like YouTube and Facebook exist as facilitators of social media on one side. But then there are social nodal points like "I'm a Mac" commercials that get people talking. And then there are guerrilla marketing tactics that get people using social networking websites, and get people talking at the office.

All of these are methods of participating in social media, but none of them completely define it.

HOW-TO Unfriend Someone

Find his or her name in your list of friends, and click the little “x”. That’s all there is to it.

The top referrals to my site come from people searching for something along the lines of “How to unfriend someone.” It’s really not that hard, it’s not something you should be taking tons of time to think about. It’s not serious. You’re not blacklisting them, (unless you are actually going to block them, which is recommended in some cases) you just don’t consider them really good friends. Like, real-life friends, not the bastardized term “friend” we use on the internet.

If you’re considering unfriending someone, it’s the right thing to do. You can always friend him again, later. “But,” you say, “won’t they be offended?” Maybe. But seriously, if you’re done having him on your friends list, why do you care? Someone who makes you feel obligated to friend them is far from a friend, he’s a leech.

Facebook for almost all people is a collection of names and nothing more. It’s not a network of trusting and trusted friends. It’s a phone book with pictures.

You don’t have to friend your boss, you don’t have to friend your coworkers. You don’t have to friend anyone you don’t want to. If you’re worried that your boss will be mad at you, then you have a pretty terrible job, and a much bigger problem than internet etiquette.

Imagine a world where your friends list is populated only by close, real-life friends. People you trust with your personal thoughts and feelings, people you can count on to help you out and who you want to help. You know, friends. Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to censor your thoughts about something because you’re worried the wrong person might see it?

Oh, and if you’re thinking, “But what if a real friend on my list sees something I’ve written and then passes it on to someone else?” Well, if you’re concerned about someone doing that, then he’s not your friend.

Unfriend him.

Your Social Networking DNA

So I'm at the AIM Conference and I just heard a presentation by the General Manager of Yahoo! Canada talk about Social Networking DNA.

His point was, basically, it's unreasonable to expect social networks to continue to operate as they do now, because currently they're the only space where people of all ages interact together. He gave the example that if he started shopping for clothes where his daughter shops, she'd throw away her clothes.

Sure, that makes sense.

And I agree that it's weird and probably unsustainable for Facebook to draw people of every demographic.

And I agree that the future is going hyper local. Everyone will have their own networks where they can interact with the people they want to interact with, when they want to. There will still be Facebook, where everyone is, but there will be smaller, more niche networks, where you can talk to specific groups of people with whom you have a specific connection.

But I do not agree that people will have a single profile, a single "you" that will get carried from network to network, saving you from creating new profiles and logins everywhere you go.

Why? Because you're not the same "you" on every network. Your Facebook "you" is different than your Twitter "you" because your Twitter messages are broadcast to everyone. You're just not the same person everywhere you go.

And if someone steals your one, single social networking identity, that could be as damaging to your business and reputation as your real, actual identity.

Having a single "you" is as bad as being forced to use biometric information to gain access to physical locations or computer data. If someone steals your credit card and your identity, you cancel the card and you contact the police and the government, because you'll be able to prove through all your other "profiles" that you're the real you.

If someone steals your fingerprint, or gets the data from your iris and manages to steal your identity that way, how could you possibly prove you're the real you?

If someone steals your one, single social media DNA, you're in the same boat.

Unfriend Someone Today

How-To Unfriend Someone Now Available

What utility is a social network if you can't use it to be genuinely social, to actually experience it as a gathering of friends? If you are using social networks as a competition, taking the Pokemon-ish "Gotta catch 'em all" approach, at what point is it still useful to you?

Can you be honest with your status updates? Do you have to wonder whether the pictures you post might be incriminating? Is your profile wide open for the world to view and judge?

I'm not advocating being paranoid about what you do online. I'm suggesting that you arrange your online affairs in such a way that you don't have to be paranoid. "Friend" doesn't mean "acquaintance whose name you can barely recall." It means someone you care about, someone you care about knowing and dealing with on a regular basis. Someone you can count on and can count on you.

Social networks become a liability when you constantly have to maintain relationships out of obligation instead of interest.

If you had a personal crisis dealing with a sensitive personal issue and you needed to contact your all close friends right away, could you post it as your Facebook status? Or would you have to manually select which of your "Friends" are actually close enough to you to learn about it, and send them a Message instead?

Then how is Facebook any better than an email list?

Unfriend someone today. It's good for you.