Social Networking Stigma

Many of my friends will remember back to about six or seven years ago when the folks in my social circle lived and died by who was and wasn’t on your "friends list" on LiveJournal. Since then, we’ve seen many social network sites and blog pages come and go (which has me wondering if there will ever be a "definitive" Interweb social format.)

I personally never got into MySpace – and only set one up for the sake of saying it was there. I am currently hooked on two of the "flavor of the month" social sites, though… Twitter and Facebook.

Microblogging is fun. The idea that I can share a thought and share in the thoughts (and feelings) of others fascinates me.

Am I having a good day? Do I miss a friend? Am I excited about my plans for the weekend? Am I playing video games? All that my friends and (in the case of Twitter) others on the Internet have to do is read my updates.

Facebook has become more of a place for my private thoughts and things I don’t need to share with the general public. I read Facebook to learn about my friends lives – to share in the joy and frustrations of their day to day existence… I do not read the updates to be reminded of things that frustrate me and bring up negative feelings.

Believe it or not – I want to enjoy being reading things on the Internet for the right reasons.

So today – I am cutting around twenty folks from my Facebook friends list for various reasons. Some may be put back over time, but I have my motivations for doing so. If you see me no longer listed as a "friend" on Facebook and are wondering why, please message me or call me and I can let you know why.

Don’t assume the reason, though, because you are probably wrong.

That said, I feel I have to make the following disclaimer for many of my Internet saavy friends who can read things the wrong way from time to time:

DISCLAIMER: JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT ON MY FACEBOOK FRIENDS LIST DOES NOT MEAN WE ARE NOT FRIENDS. PERIOD. We live in the real world, folks, and the web is just a tool for communication – not a tool for labelling relationships.

So there you have it: I just wrote a social networking blog entry by typing it in an email on my phone (hence any typos) which will post to my blog on TomCroom.com. That post will eventually feed to Twitter with a link back to here and THAT will, in turn, feed back into Facebook.

The Social Network Circle of Life. (Simba would be proud.)