Decreasing Connections While Increasing Our Networks

September 24, 2008 · Comments

Here’s a special guest post by Corvida. If you’re not already subscribed to her blog, you should be.

Decreasing Connections While Increasing Our Networks

While lounging on my couch this morning I decided to go through all 200 Twitter and FriendFeed requests that I’ve procrastinated on getting to this week. Lately I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed with requests that I’ve created a filter in Gmail to label and archive these requests. When I clicked on the label and took a cursory glance at my inbox, I wondered why I’d been feeling so overwhelmed with going through these requests. After about 10 minutes it hit me: as my network grows social networks don’t allow me to connect to my followers the way I used to.

It Was All A Dream

Let me take you back for a second. When I first began to gain notoriety, I only had a handful of Twitter followers. Definitely no more than 400. At that time I would tweet good morning and get several responses back. I would reply to each response and hold about 4 conversations at once on Twitter. This was the reason why I tweeted so much. It was much easier to hold a conversation and keep up with individual people. I knew who the majority of my followers were, thereby enabling me to utilize Twitter to its maximum potential. I was able to connect, refer, analyze, and reflect on what I was getting from my followers. Things just aren’t the same anymore.

Back To Reality

Now, I couldn’t tell you who half of my followers are. I really don’t know who I’m following and who I’m not following. I don’t even know why certain people are following me. In turn, my conversation on Twitter has deteriorated along with the amount of time I used to spend on Twitter.

Maybe growth on some of these networks isn’t the best thing in the world. Should there be self-imposed limits on how many people you befriend? No because in the end, while your network growth may increase, your connection with your network still increases. However, the rate at which the connection can increase actually decreases. Did that make sense? Unless your friends are constantly questioning you or keeping tabs on you, it’s going to take a lot longer to make deeper connections the more your network grows.

More Features or Better Tools?

Though there are plenty of social networks to go around, I’m beginning to wonder if they incorporate the right tools to be able to keep up with our growing networks. We don’t have a clue on where to begin to make deeper connections as our networks continue to grow. In turn, things may just get out of hand. You start adding people just because they added you with no desire to establish a real relationship with anyone that you haven’t already befriended beforehand. Here are my questions for the developers and users of social networks:

  • How do you maintain connections with your network of friends?
  • What features or tools help you to maintain these connections?
  • What features or tools are missing that you feel could help you to grow your connections even more?

What do you think?

Corvida writes at SheGeeks.net

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  • Sharon
    I'll let anyone follow me if they fit any one of these parameters:
    -I know them.
    -They live in my state.
    -We have similar interests.
    -Are good Twitter writers.

    Otherwise, I block the rest.
    And, except for a few exceptions, I follow everyone right back.

    This means invariably, that I tweet with people from all over the world that have my interests or are very eloquent, I learn and keep up with what is going on in those interests, and I keep up with my local community.

    And my friend to follow ratio is pretty close 1:1.
    I find that I am as networked as I want to be, and conversely am able to keep my sanity.
  • Excellent POST Corvida!
    As the social media world grows I think we will being to see a dialing back of social activity and the member population shrinking into more niche groups. We can see the paradigm switch between Myspace to Facebook to NING. Niche communities will be the thing of the future (even if that future is one month)... :-)
  • I also tend to use certain networks for different things.. Twitter is open. LinkedIN is closed to people I know. SmallerIndiana.com is my niche community network.. and FriendFeed is completely open free-for-all.
  • awesome post... makes me think about why we connect with other people. I want to use tools/platforms like twitter to connect with other voices I dont get to hear all the time. Thats VALUE for me. It all comes down to your goals for that channel.

    If I am into these platforms for ideas, conversation starters, following people who I appreciate, then awesome. If I am into these platforms to share my ideas with a wide audience then also, COOL.

    If all I am doing is playing a game (he who has the most ADDs on MySpace or FOLLOWS on Twitter or FRIENDS on Facebook wins) then is VALUE really being added to my life? Am I adding value to my users? Where does signal turn into noise?
  • well anecdote military studies & studies in mgt show it is difficult to effectively manage more than 200 people & a group of about 20 is ideal - should not be that different in communications networks especially that it is electronic not physical as per all of the studies on optimal human resource management - signal or noise - it takes effort to manage largely effortless micoblogging communications ... FWIW
  • It's important not to let Web 2.0 and social networking eat into your productive working time. A timer works well to regulate the time you spend at these social networking sites.

    Maybe the people are correct who predict that Web 3.0 will be a way to manage all the relationship potential that Web 2.0 brought us.
  • Maybe the key is just to read and reply selectively. You're probably already doing this with your email and the news. As for myself I just allocate a few times a day to read whatever's on the first page of my Twitter, click the links or reply if something really grabs me, and just post on a whim or when I have something to say.

    I keep up with friends, family and colleagues through other means. I agree Twitter is just a game to see who can get the most followers. But if I can get another dozen people to read my latest blog post, it's worth a few minutes of time.
  • This seems to be the question that will never get answered ...

    i like the article about the NY Times put out where they talked about 'ambient awareness'

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07aw...

    it seems that this is 'how' these digital social networks help us. they allow people in our network to know more about what we do, read, think, say, etc ... on a daily, hourly, minute(ly) basis ...

    the types of relationships we build online will never be like the ones we build with the folks we were in high school, college, work, church, flag football, (fill in your activity) with ... unless we take what we develop online offline.

    i don't know that there is a correct answer or solution to all of this. it seems to all come down to the individuals needs, wants, uses ...

    as far as pulling all these tools together ... oh man!! thats half the battle of all this. to many connections in to many places. just not manageable.

    great post btw :)

    --
    http://twitter.com/franswaa
  • I've cut way back on web 2.0 stuff. It needs a lot more development to avoid the very problem you so astutely raised in this post!

    I'm back to well-chosen forums for social networking.

    *How do you maintain connections with your network of friends?

    I rely heavily on them reaching me. I make my profile as attractive as I can and let the bytes fall where they may...

    *What features or tools help you to maintain these connections?

    Google Reader and Gmail plus my instant Reader > FriendFeed > Twitter connection.

    *What features or tools are missing that you feel could help you to grow your connections even more?

    Artificial Intelligence.

    ~ Alex from Our Evolution
  • James Helms
    I think that there will always be limits on our ability to connect. It's not a tool issue as much as a brain issue. If you try to do too much then you end up being ineffective. Niche sites happen naturally, people naturally associate with people with something in common.

    If any one tool could help manage networks of friends it would be a tool that aggregates conversations surrounding the same or similar topics. We have seen this happen with hashtags to a limited extent.
  • Great post.

    The main Twitter tool missing for me would be a 'personal comments field': somewhere to jot notes and reminders about that person: if we met & where, topics chatted about, birthdays, etc.
  • An inspired post. It reminds me a little bit about the conversation in a Avoiding Disaster session at BlogWorld.

    Personally, I think people are wired differently so they mix and match tools differently, which explains the varied answers. On Twitter specifically, my friends tend to message me direct when it matters, and we connect on more places than Twitter.

    I do limit my connections on Twitter. It's the once place I tend to skew toward friends and communicators/related professions. There are some exceptions, but otherwise, my connections grows on other social networks.

    Rich
  • I'm interested in this phenomenon of "too much". We really should expect "too much" when we take our ability to communicate on a one-to-one basis and multiply it by the web (not actually infinite, but expanding at a great rate every day).

    I have set up similar requirements for LinkedIn connections to what Sharon has for Twitter. I am mainly interested in getting people into my network who can help me professionally. Despite this I am a member of an 'open networker' group, mainly as an experiment. I try to maintain a "75% known ratio", meaning that 3 of every 4 people need to be someone I've had a pre-existing relationship (at the very least, a meaningful email conversation).

    One question I would love to get answered: where can I aggregate all of my comments from various blogs into a single feed? This would go far toward getting things organized. Any suggestions?
  • I use (and built) Twitly.com to manage Twitter connections - when you follow to many people it just becomes too hard to keep track of what people are saying or doing
  • I don't know if you have ever looked into setting up a Laconica server. You could then setup a limited list of people that could join your server, who you would consider to be the people you want to follow.

    You could still have friendships with people from other servers, but you would be able to concentrate mainly on the people from your own server.
  • hey Chris

    this is what I do in the situation you described:
    i hardly add people I don't know to my friends list. those who wants to friend me who doesnt wanna be in real touch are ignored. this gives me real power in terms of usage of my social graph.

    as to Twitter: I follow fewer people than i have followers. I try knowing them all even though its not possible, even in my small network.

    other networks: what happens there is that i "copy paste" my graph when people befriend me. less work, i don't add people i dont know.

    as to you- you will always have more followers than people you follow or friend yourself ,cause you are one but you are just one of the 5% of people who creates data on the net, you write a lot. the rest read and follow and these are the rest of the 95%.

    bottom line: keep your graph to people you know. you can't do anything (and should do anything) with how people follow you. just keep being true to yourself.
  • Ann
    Like others who have posted here, I use different social networks in different ways.

    I use twitter to learn, and I have learned so much from "eavesdropping" on people I follow. I will follow back anyone who seems human, posts about more than just partying and who posts primarily in English, since I don't read any other language.

    I use Facebook more for "ambient awareness", and keep it primarily (though not exclusively) to people I have met in person.

    LinkedIn is reserved for people that I would feel comfortable introducing to my boss and colleagues, though not necessarily an in-person relationship.

    Now I'm feeling like I need something "in between", to keep up with people from twitter or blogs with whom I've had conversations, be they electronic or face to face. I may explore FriendFeed for that. I've been trying to track them in Batchbook, with mixed results. And i'm like some kind of "check in" reminder to reach out to those people once in awhile, and to see what they are up to if we haven't interacted in awhile.
  • I sometimes think too far. First we need to look online for real life, so that all finally talk with real people. So should not scare us if we have too many connections, or there is less interaction than before. It's normal to be so, because networks have increased by tens of times and appeared more and more people who have something important to say, and you can not even to watch everything you want. Some 2-3 thanks to the people's praise to the skies, with thousands of others who question just what they said. Go with your feet on the ground, when they do not want fame, just objectivity, thanks to those who follow you or let you watch them, because if it's just dealing money from friends, in the end will no longer remain with no friends, you just stay with your family and so.
  • How do you maintain connections with your network of friends?

    I search for people that have a question or need help and support. Then, I connect them with my Trusted Resource of Clients, Strategic Partners and Alliances.

    Somebody within my Twitter network was having a challenge with her website. I sent her an interview that I did with Dr Robert Joseph (www.GluLife.com). He talks about using open source content management system to build a website. It's a different approach.

    Entrepreneurs can embrace technology and build and maintain their own websites!
  • If the goal is to create a large group of 'followers', that's one thing. But if the larger goal (really) is to create a wedge-shaped long-tail of replicating ADVOCATES for your mission... that's quite another; isn't it? If so, then in the final analysis, you may never know the ultimate impact (and impactees) of what you're doing.
  • It all depends on the value you would like to achieve. The price of becoming more popular and having your status grow is to develop a larger network. Of course the larger the network the more unrealistic it is to be personal with all of them. I don't think there is any tool that could help that cause and to be honest, you or anyone else is extremely busy and does not have time to devote to establishing personal relationships with the masses. It must be tough and nice at the same time and I think you have to do whats best for you and allows you to enjoy what you are doing.

    Craig
    www.budgetpulse.com
  • I agree with you completely. I have seen it on every single network I have been a part of, including AOL where I was staff when there were less than 200K members. I find myself dropping out as things become more and more depersonalized. I am not sure what the answer is, other than to keep moving to "the next big thing". After 16 years o trotting about the nets, it does become wearisome though.
  • You know, I started off with a noble goal of essentially keeping my facebook account pretty much professional and not personal. But slowly but surely all of these old college friends are discovering Facebook and sending friend requests and I cannot refuse. So now it's this hodgepodge of professional contacts and personal contacts so I've decided to simply be very picky about what I post and make sure everything that originates from me is for the most part semi-professional. Now, about Twitter. I started out following anyone who followed me because that seemed like the right thing to do. Now I check their posts first to see what they tweet about and if it seems to be a full-time job on their part that's largely about lunch dates and vet appointments, I don't even bother. I have also stopped following a few. Very few. I have now come to terms with the fact that I don't have to super poke everyone who pokes me, or engage in a game of Scrabulous just because a co-worker from 1996 enjoys it and thinks I should to.
  • Corvida? I scanned my Twitter/FriendFeed list and found I was following you. Huh, who knew. :p

    All kidding aside, as Corvida's partner-in-crime, she knows I limit the amount of people I follow for that very reason, and every so often I peek through and rmeove those that do not post or don't have content I want to see on a constant basis. While that does not mean that I don't like you as a person, it just means I use Twitter differently than all social activity. You cannot keep a close relationship with everyone by following thousands. Twitter themselves limited the amount one person can follow to 2k now right?
  • Hi, Corvida! You make some excellent points.... and echo my own feelings about Twitter over the past year or so. It was fun while it lasted, but the combination of scaling problems and lack of innovation led me to a self-imposed twitter break. After which the honeymoon was essentially over. I've found that key people like Mona on FriendFeed can make such services fun, personal and compelling. Tomorrow, however, is "another day" and in the end, issues of IP ownership, the future, and even ownership of your own contact graph haven't really been addressed. I'm a little disappointed in myself that I spent so much time accumulating an interesting friend graph only to grow weary of the service itself. I do still follow some around the non-twitterverse, such as yourself :-)

    Best -- "reechard"
  • Thank you all for your informative and well thought responses. I'm glad Chris gave me the opportunity to engage with you all.

    @"Reechard" - Once you go on a self-imposed exile on Twitter, you don't come back the same. I completely understand where you're coming from and it is a bit heartbreaking and frustrating to spend so much time and energy on a service, and then suddenly have all these problems with it.

    @Tracy Lee - Maybe the depersonalization of it all is the real problem.


    With all the limits that everyone is imposing, doesn't that just further the depersonalization process? Doesn't it get frustrating after a while. I know I've gotten to a point where sometimes I'll add people just because I don't feel like checking to see if they meet my "limits/requirements". Has anyone else found themselves doing this?
  • This is such a good question and I'm struggling with it myself. I've been trying to be explicit with my friending policies -
    http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/09/netw...

    But that is time consuming and not fulfilling to have to ask each stranger who wants to be friends - now who are you? Why do you want to be friends.


    I've leading a discussion about professional networking over at social edge and posted a link to this post.

    http://www.socialedge.org/discussions/marketing...
  • No more Mom and Pop store for you! What will you do with this added responsibility, because regardless if Twitter cuts into your productivity or not - do have the responsibility of your followers or fans who may want to learn from you? Maybe hire a Twitter assistant?

    On a serious note - quality before quantity.
  • I use Twitter as a kind of tech and marketing magazine to see what people are doing and keep tabs on the latest utilities and marketing resources. I don't follow too many people and, I don't post a lot mainly because my time is at a premium right now (cancer caretaking). Because of our situation, it has become clear that all of this can become wheel-spinning unless we know why we're doing it. It's really important to know why you're following people and even if you NEED this in your life at all! How many associates do we really need in our lives? How much business do we really need? Everyone has to answer that for themselves, I know. But it has to create some kind of value... or it's...well.... valueless :-) It shouldn't be a ritual.
  • How do I maintain relationships with my networks....
    I use different networks for different things. Facebook I use for people I know or have met. It's almost entirely personal, I update my status frequently but don't sweat it. For some reason my friends are quite interested in what I'm up to - and when I meet them I must admit being amused when someone says to me, offline, "oh, yes, I saw that on your Facebook update!"

    My Linked In network is entirely professional, with past and present work and employement. I've met or have had several interactions with, all my connections... and I have just over 100. With Linked in I think that if I asked any of my connections for a recommendation they could give me one, and vice-versa.
    I keep in touch with my connections via email.. and sometimes phone and meetings - depending on where they are.

    Twitter... I have just joined and I'm using it to contribute and learn and for exposure;it will probably be mainly business. I don't "know" my "followers" or those I follow in quite the same way, but I'm impressed with the info they share. It's wait and see, but I'm not after hundreds of followers because I know I won't be able to keep up.
    I'm thinking of trying Friendfeed, but haven't yet.
    I can't think of any other tools I need... but I'm sure some will be invented ;)
  • Twitter brings me information I would not search for but I'm finding valuable, plus I like to connect with people in different areas of the world and see how they're dealing with life and business.

    I use LinkedIn for the people I've built an offline relationship with. I'm not looking for 500+ connections to people that may or may not assist in my endeavors or I may or may not assist in theirs. I will provide answers on LinkedIn but I'm not always looking to connect.

    I don't see any of these tools cutting into my productivity, I see Twitter as a boost to my creativity I can asks quick questions and get quicker responses than some of the forums I belong to.
  • Corvida, I share the same perceptions, although I am only following 513. It was so much sweeter when it was a tighter group, and I did actually read each and EVERY incoming tweet. The connection definitely feels shallower as the 'network' grows.

    I don't have any solution, just noting the predicament you describe rings so true. Right now, I am mostly not following any new people unless they are incredibly compelling - which to me means they are unique than most of the people I already follow. Oh, and I follow poets, musicians, artists, writers, filmmakers, etc anytime.

    Perhaps your name contains a seed clue...corvida - core vida - core life (spanish). Focus on core, prune the rest?
  • My take: this is as much a human problem -- how we *think* about things -- as it is a technological one.

    For instance, you could cut in half the number of people you're following on Twitter. You could limit it only to people you know, or only to those you know well, or only those who regularly trade tweets with you. Everybody else could still get your attention by typing @chrisbrogan anytime, so it's not like you'd be blocking them. But your incoming stream would be a lot more manageable.

    In other words, not to point the finger but just as an observation, your experience of Twitter has changed based on actions of your own -- following a lot of people you don't know -- and could presumably be changed back by taking different actions.

    When I joined Twitter late last year, more than once I heard that it was good practice (or even mandatory for good etiquette) to follow back everyone who follows you. I quickly discovered that this advice didn't work for me, because I got overwhelmed by the flow of tweets. So now I view my decision to follow as independent from the other person's decision to follow. There's no reason for me to get mad at, say, Merlin Mann for not following me back, and similarly I'm not beholden to follow someone else's tweets just because they're following mine. Indeed, I can be grateful for their attention -- and open in corresponding if they decide to trade tweets with me directly -- without falsely pretending that I share many of their interests.

    All that to say this: sometimes I do come across a clear technological need in a tool -- a button or widget or whatever that would make it more useful. But more often I come across the need for me to think through my own practices more carefully.
  • Hi there!...I have also tried mypage.com, it's free and its nice. They have a lot of apps.and also communities you can be a part of.(":)
  • In the end doesn't it come down to goals? As your network has grown bigger adding people relentlessly may no longer fit your goal.

    If your main aim is to increase awareness of your own brand, then it may be worth continuing to add everyone (possibly worth outsourcing this to someone who can click the links for you and let you know if there are any particularly noteworthy new contacts).

    However if your main goal is having a high quality network with a high signal to noise ration, then adding everyone will eventually become a problem.
  • I also realized that as my social network grows so does my social commitments. So, yes, definitely, each node on my social graph gets less attention. We will probably learn how to scale that too:)
  • By the way, I realize now that I made a mistake when I wrote my comment above: I missed the explanatory note at the top saying this post was from Corvida, so I directed my reply to Chris. I think the concept still applies, but I wanted to note the dissonance.
  • For me it always starts with "What is your Desired Outcome?"

    Social Networks are great for increasing and maintaing the ability to connect with people -- but what for?

    Authentic Networking starts with connections with people you like, respect, and have a real reason to connect with. To keep these relationships requires caring and effort vs. tools.

    What the social networking tools are great at taking advantage of the adage that "nobody is as smart as everybody", what they are not great at is real relationships.

    More on these topics:

    Authentic Networking: http://azzarellogroup.com/desired-outcome/03-20...

    The Power of weak connections: http://azzarellogroup.com/blog/2008/08/20/the-p...
  • @corvida..

    I agree with you on so many points. With twitter I try to keep up with a select few who I have made an effort to get to know. I cannot know and be everything to everybody. It is IMPOSSIBLE.

    I have a twitter checklist too but now it is getting a little hard for me now where people in other social networks want to add me on twitter and I have to remember from what network do I know them from.

    I do twitter a lot and maybe that is why people want to add me because they know I am always on twitter which in reality is a real drawback.

    I have halted my blogging for awhile to have a better strategy to approach all the requests that I am getting to blog or just read someone's blog post.

    I am like you overwhelmed and this is when you have to set limits on what works best for you.

    Further, I refuse to use my real professional contacts for people who I do not know at all. I have had some very bizarre requests from some asking me to help them to connect to others and I do not know who they are at all.

    Thanks for a great post!
  • Twitter needs more features, namely groups. Until then, Tweetdeck allows me to filter for the people I really want to track. The rest of the tweets go by in a stream that I'll glance at periodically.
  • Great post, Corvida. I admit that I follow everyone who follows me. RSS is my lifeline.

    The way I filter everything is by subscribing to feeds of terms I search at search.twitter.com. So, I don't really follow people but conversations. This allows me to see and hear from new people, too.

    I feel like we always look to the same people and listen to the same voices collectively. That's not bad, but I also want to hear some new voices, get some different perspectives. Following search terms helps me find some new people.

    I also use search.twitter.com to search and follow via RSS a handful of people (about 20) who I actually know and want to read their Tweets.
  • I am actually having the same problem. Since I have been spending a lot of time with limited internet access it becomes difficult to keep up with all my social networking and media sites. I've been looking for tools to keep it all organized, but I don't to use something that is going to make my contact less personal.
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