Social Media -- Out of Control?

It's been awhile since I've posted, partially due to being on vacation over the past week, but also in that mad rush of getting ready to leave (both home and work) prior to my trip. As I was driving earlier this morning, I began to think about how the social media I use (primarily Facebook and Twitter) have begun to complicate my life recently. While they enable me to remain in close contact with old friends, after being left alone too long, they have turned into time-wasters.It is times like this that a social media "purge" becomes necessary. As of this writing, I have 253 friends on Facebook. That in itself, compared to many of my friends whose lists are well over 500, seems good -- at first glance. However, I also 'like' 289 things. With the advent of Facebook's 'Subscribe' button, the posts from those 289 'likes' show up in my news feed -- making it resemble my Twitter feed. Thankfully, my Twitter feed moves somewhat slowly -- if you consider for a moment that I only follow 94 people or businesses. It's for these reasons that a purge is necessary -- and in a purge, ruthlessness is the name of the game.

Purging extraneous people from the list of people I follow on Twitter is a simple matter -- and provided I force myself to adhere to the unspoken rule of Twitter (It is not necessary to follow someone who follows you), my Twitter feed will be much easier to stay on top of. Facebook, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Not only is it much more time consuming to take someone out of your news feed (whether unfriending or unsubscribing), it is also far too easy to get sucked into the trap of friending everyone you know -- and then keeping them in your list.

As much as I would like to simply remove a large number of my 'friends', it is far easier to simply 'unsubscribe'. Not only does this prevent you from having to re-friend them in the future, it cleans up your news feed -- and you can always resubscribe, without them ever being aware they were taken off.

The cleanup of my news feeds is by no means a project I relish, but it is the only way my social media channels will ever become useful again. Are you in control of your social media feeds, or are they a nightmare you struggle to navigate?