Comments on: Why we’re not friends anymore: the nptech echo chamber

By: Fred Simmons

Fred Simmons — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:00:09 +0000

I won’t even friend my parents on Facebook.

By: Nonprofit Communications » Blog Archive » Mixing Your Work and Personal Life Online

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:20:33 +0000

[...] Why We’re Not Friends Anymore (Michelle Murrain) [...]

By: Sarah Conner-Smith

Sarah Conner-Smith — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:51:05 +0000

I can appreciate “de-friending” people with whom you have a strictly professional relationship. I don’t mind connecting with people on FB when my primary connection with them is professional, but I do hope that there is an understanding that the primary communication with FB is personal interest. If you want to know more about me personally, great. Don’t judge, and if you’re not interested, let’s connect on Linkedin.

Twitter is where the waters are a bit murkier for me. There the personal meets the professional in a way that is a little muddy, and that works. There is a time of day that I tweet articles of a more professional nature, and after 5:00 pm and on the weekends, I may tweet about the movie I’m going to with my sweetie, and the new restaurant we’re trying.

There may be crossover (I have some of the same friends on all of my networks), but the audiences are entirely different.

By: Peter Campbell

Peter Campbell — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:17:45 +0000

I might follow your lead here. Facebook continues to confound and annoy me, because, unlike the other two social networks that I’m active on, it feels very unmanageable. I appreciate the opportunity to connect with so many people from various points and places in my life, but I just don’t know how to communicate to all of them. Not much of what I do is of equal interest to my dad, my cousin-in-law, my best friend from grade school and my nptech friends. So, since I have a healthy communication stream with the nptech commnunity on Twitter, and a way of staying in touch (as Twitter is very tenuous) via LinkedIn, I might whittle my friends on Facebook down to the non nptech crowd, too.

I stopped doing the ping-style broadcasting across networks some time ago, and the best thing about the new Facebook interface was that I was able to create a group called “notweets” and make that my default update view, effectively screening them out. I use a Facebook plugin that cross-posts tweets to Facebook if they have the hashtag “#fb”. but I use it sparingly.

By: Rebecca Leaman

Rebecca Leaman — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:15:12 +0000

Disconcerting, the very real possibility of an infinite loop!
I stopped using Ping.fm a while back (for the very reasons you mention) and have resisted the urge to feed Twitter into Facebook (ditto). But of course that’s only one side of the conversation. It can be surprisingly challenging (and time-consuming) to make an effort to go outside the echo chamber, seek out fresh new voices. Still working on that…

By: admin

admin — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:27:18 +0000

I do think it’s true – it does depend a lot on what you want to accomplish. I think that there are ways that we’ve gotten a bit more sophisticated in dealing with social networks. And yeah, I’m not really a laggard, it was just an excuse to send you a link. :-)

As to moving across country – I imagine you’ve already hired the movers – but the self-service movers (where you basically hire a part of a semi-truck) leave much to be desired, for a variety of reasons. And I enjoyed taking the slow route across the country to see just how darned big it is!

By: Beth Kanter

Beth Kanter — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:39:14 +0000

Well, I wouldn’t necessarily describe you as a laggard if we look at the whole spectrum of adoption.

I think it comes down deciding what you want accomplish, what channel is work related and what is a little more personal – and if there is even a boundary between the two.

BTW, question – since you’ve moved cross country – any advice? I’m t-minus 3 weeks from move.