Thanks for the referral to the initial post and the follow up comments. You make a good point that with Facebook, like many other social media tools, usefulness is subjective. For me, I’ve found it easy to get sucked into “shiny object syndrome,” so I try to step back occasionally to reassess my reason for using these tools and to ensure that I haven’t lost sight of the forest for the trees.

In LinkedIn there are conservative networkers and then there are LIONs, and everyone inbetween. Everyone has to figure out where they fall on the connection policy spectrum… for some it makes sense to be more open, for other, more closed. It’s a personal thing.

And, some people use LI for searching (a big database) while others use it for relationships and communications. Different strokes for different folks.

Same in FB … some are there for family and personal relationships, not to connect with everyone they can. Since Lauren could delete 500 “friends,” she probably accepted friend invites from many (anyone?) people… and has since rethought her strategy with this tool to make it a more personal place.

I’m guessing this will make it less a “waste of time” than what it was for her before. It’s just her personal decision to manage “information overload” and all the other overhead social stuff brings us.

The second thing is the line: “I’d have a higher regard for JJBlog if I thought that WAS your intent, but that’s beside the point.” I have tried to figure out what this means (“your blog sucks and this is indicative of why” or “usually you are pretty good but everyone once in a while you write stuff I don’t agree with” or “I just came across your blog and it obviously sucks”… ) All I know is, I win some, I lose some. And I have lovers and haters for most of my blog posts.

Luckily we can all choose which blogs we follow, and which to ignore.