You all have facebook friends you don’t follow in order to keep your facebook stream positive, fresh, and in line with your objectives of use. It’s a good thing. I’ve just run the stats on the percentage of facebook friends that I’ve unfollowed and it’s small but relevant. Here are criteria I use in order to determine if I unfollow someone:
- Is the platform being primarily used for commercial promotion or is there a surreptitious agenda?
- Do people actually sincerely share about themselves? Is it personal?
- Are the numbers of posts excessive and sometimes overly trivial?
- Can I learn something through the feed which is interesting which I wouldn’t necessarily find elsewhere?
- Is vanity a theme?
- Is there a concentration toward political topics?
- Is the post original, a repost, or a re-circulated quote. If not original, is there context or has it been freshened with a personal addition?
Furthermore, people have the capacity for change and I’m still very interested in the lives of those few in which I’ve unfollowed of whom I may very well refollow. In fact, I’ve unfollowed one very good friend (LOL).
I suspect that most intuitively have similar criteria. Social media is evolving and frankly I’m fascinated by what I sometimes see. One friend here (you know who you are) was onto the social media bandwagon at its outset. In spite of facebook having security issues, people are resilient and continue to hang here which speaks to the power of the internet as a viable way of interpersonal connection.