Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Buyer's Remorse: De-Followers & De-Frienders

I've become mildly aware of de-friending and de-following on Facebook and Twitter, respectively.

As Twitter garners many non-acquaintance followers gained from either my industry-related or one-off culture comments, some amount of de-following on Twitter is kind of to be expected -- someone sees an interesting comment, clicks "follow" and then later realizes my stream ain't their cup of tea. I definitely notice people signing up for a little RJ, then having buyer's remorse and de-following me (usually within a day or two of following me in the first place).

On the other hand, my Facebook "friends" generally aren't strangers; I am usually personally connected to FB friends via actual live connections, either personal or professional. Yet despite actual personal connections, I still experience a fairly high rate of de-friending from FB friends, and I find this more interesting than losing a few non-acquaintances who happened to follow me on Twitter. And it's really interesting when I discover the de-friending friend is actually someone I've spent some significant time with (ouch)!!!

To be objective to both the Twitter and Facebook camps (unhappy campers, actually), I do happen to write what I like to think are thought-provoking tweets and status updates. I recognize that some of these comments may cross the line for some people; the statements might even offend some (even if my intent was merely provoking thought and conversation).

In all of these de-friend and de-follow instances, I try not to take them personally -- I don't (at least I think I don't). But I also have to face the possibility that perhaps my tweets and updates aren't thought-provoking-cum-offensive to some; rather, I may just be a big bore. Crap, maybe I'm just not popular. Oh no, I'm back in junior high again. Ugh...

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Interview with the Social Media Examiner

Here's an interview I did with the Social Media Examiner that covers some of the highlights of the 2009 State of the Blogosphere, the "media" in social media, and recents developments at Technorati Media and technorati.com.


Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.