“Have you heard? John and Mary broke up.”

“How do you know?”

“She just updated her Facebook”

Believe it or not, this is how many people today find out about break ups and new relationships. With just a few clicks, you can make it ‘official.’

As Facebook continues to grow in both size and influence, more and more people are making their relationships public. While by no means is it a requirement to state who you are dating or if the relationship is ‘complicated,’ Facebook users feel the need to share it with others.

Facebook: Reality?

I remember once when someone told me that if it wasn’t on Facebook, it wasn’t official. While this may be just a saying, the truth is that Facebook has done such a good job of representing real-life relationships online, that for some, reality and online blur together.

While Facebook is far from close to replacing real-life relationships, perhaps this is the future of social networking sites. When you look at the success of online dating networks like eHarmony and Match.com, both of which have over 20 million registered users, the foundation of their success is rooted in their ability to leverage online connections and transform them into real ones.

A user on eHarmony doesn’t know what their potential ‘match’ looks like in person, but can develop an idea from pictures, video, and basic profile information. Similarly, on Facebook it is not uncommon for individuals to be friends with people they have never met before in person, yet converse and network with them as if they have.

While the comparison was made to dating networks, Facebook will never be a dating network. Facebook isn’t just about your love life, that is just a small portion of it.

[Name] Is No Longer Listed As Single

Another relationship starts, another one ends. That is the cycle. No one is alarmed anymore when someone becomes single it seems, but that is what happens when your community is built around sharing what used to be private information reserved only for those close to you. It’s not uncommon for you to run into someone at the market whom you haven’t seen in 5 years, yet seemingly know everything about them. Still, you wouldn’t dare say or ask about details you’ve read about them on Facebook for fear of being called a stalker, but would rather ask questions about things you already know the answers too.

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Facebook continues to change the way we interact and network with others. As more and more information becomes available to others, the question then becomes, when the time comes for you to update your Facebook Relationship status, what will you choose?

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Joseph Yi is the Director of Marketing at Viralogy.com and works in social media and sports consulting. Find more about him on his website.

The other day I received a Facebook friend request from someone I didn’t know. While I was surprised at the request, it wasn’t the first time. When I view their profile they had over 3,500+ ‘friends,’ zero of which I knew. While there are those that use Facebook to build quality connections and meet new people, there are those that ‘collect’ friends. Like baseball cards, there are some who boast about the number of friends that they have on Facebook.

Still, this is nothing new. Long before there was LinkedIn, there was business cards, and before that, a simple handshake. For as long as ‘networking’ has been linked with ‘opportunity’ and ‘possibility,’ it seems that the common sentiment is that the larger your network is, the more opportunities you will have. With social media though, ones’ ‘network’ is evolving into more than just ‘opportunities’ and ‘possibilities,’ but ‘relationships.’

Size Matters

“Yup, you better believe it.”

If there are two approaches to ones network when it comes to social media, the first concept is that the more people you have in your network, the better. A great example of this is on Twitter. If you browse through some of the users on Twitter, it won’t take you long to find users that are Following 15,000 people. While it would be amazing if they knew all 15,000, the truth is that they probably know at most between 500-1,000 of that group. For the rest of the 14,000 or so, they are just icing on the cake.

Pros: Large ‘network’ that you can share content with

Cons: Lack of relationships with a majority of your network, difficulty in filtering information from your network

It’s Not The Size Of Your Network, It’s How You Use It

The other approach that you will find social media users engaging in is the good old fashioned “quality over quantity” approach. This approach is the complete opposite of the “Size Matters” approach in that it focuses on building quality and meaningful relationships with a smaller, more manageable group. Although the ‘network’ may only reach out to 100-300 users at a time, the power of this network can be just as effective and in some cases even more influential than that of the individual who is ‘friends’ with 15,000.  The reason for this lies in the core network itself. Because the group is smaller, and thus easier to manage, this allows the user to spend more time creating and nurturing relationships with other individuals. In response, the network has stronger ties and in most cases willing to go further when helping each other.

Pros: More time available to build relationships with each, network connections more willing to help, ability to monitor relationships with ease

Cons: Smaller network, your content/news may reach only a couple hundred as opposed to thousands

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So which approach do you practice? Do you collect ‘friends’ like their rookie cards or do you worry less about size, and more about quality? It is too early to say which one is better or worse and until then, the question remains: “Does Size Matter?”

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Photo by Robert Scoble

Did you hear who is getting married? Or about who got accepted into medical school? If you haven’t go check your Facebook feed, it is bound to be there.

As Facebook continues its’ rise to social networking supremacy, it is re-inventing the way we get information. Before there was Facebook, the way we got information about our friends and colleagues was through word of mouth or email. While we still share information through this manner, Facebook makes email seem like ‘snail mail‘ in comparison. Through news feeds and live updates, you can tell people where you are and what you are doing. You can share what you think about the movie you just saw and who you are dating and in some cases, who you aren’t. In an extreme case, you can even update your friends that you are “lost” and “trapped.”

No Pictures Please

Not only is Facebook changing the way people share information, but it is also changing the rules on etiquette and professionalism. When I was in college, a popular line I would hear people say was “this better not end up on Facebook.” Privacy is no longer as simple as saying “no pictures please.” Instead, you have to be worried about your employers seeing that one trip to Vegas, and also what people are saying about you.

Just in the same way we developed email etiquette and best practices when it first was introduced, the same is being done with Facebook.

Your Mother Uses Facebook

Not only are your friends and co-workers on Facebook, but there’s a good chance that so is your mother, father, and that one cousin you rarely see. Some may think it’s ‘un-cool’ that your mother wants to know what you are up too, but then again, she is your friend right?

When Mark Zuckerberg first created Facebook, his plan was to build an online version of real life relationships. Not only does that mean building a platform that represents the relationships you have with your friends and co-workers, but also with your own family. With the median age of Facebook users steadily rising, parents and children will eventually start sending “Friend Requests” which will undoubtedly make for dinner table conversation when they tell you to change your profile photo.

Anytime, Anyplace

If you look at the appeal that sites like Facebook and Twitter have, one of the biggest draws is its real-time updates and that you don’t even have to be sitting in front of a computer to do it. A great example of this was earlier this year when NBA player, and then Milwaukee Buck, Charlie Villanueva, tweeted during halftime.

Facebook’s current slogan is “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” In light of the way Facebook has been able to change many aspects,  a better one might be: “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you anytime. anyplace.”

Photo by pshab

I find myself acutely observant of the way various high profile Twitter personalities approach their use of the platform. Insight into their personal styles and why they have chosen to go about things the way they do allows me the opportunity to learn from those who have a proven track record in a way that no conference, camp, or meetup can. In many cases they honestly know a thing or two I don’t and no matter how knowledgeable or successful you are in your field, there is always something to be learned from those who are where you would like to be. Sometimes however, when you are the one in that place, there is something to be learned from those who are where you once were.

link link RTlink @reply @reply-inside-joke link @reply RTlink @reply…

So, we already know who you are because we’ve seen you or heard of you somewhere else. We follow you because we are expecting some kind of insight from you that we can’t get anywhere else. Yet when you interact it’s mainly with people you already know, and it’s only funny or interesting to the two of you. Hardly ever do you interact or publicly reply to those you don’t know. You tweet your own links, you tweet your friends links, you tweet your companies links. Seldom do you add something to the conversations going on in your stream, rarely do you interject things you have not already said elsewhere.

If you’re in the industry and so am I, odds are that I already follow Mashable, TechCrunch et al. and I don’t need a “best of” from 75% of the people I follow. Ask yourself what is unique about your stream and what nuggets you are sharing that make following you valuable to those who are actually using Twitter.. We all know just how much/little our follower count means: especially for those who know how to build that amount. It’s the ones who are interested, interacting, and responsive that are valuable to us: not the 185,853 Donald Trump MLM accounts, 54,848 porn accounts, and 12,437 abandoned accounts that make up your numbers.

If you are going to mostly post links at least go digging around for interesting and unique links that haven’t already passed through my stream countless times. Or add an interesting tidbit about your perspective on the link when you retweet it, if a heavily retweeted link is that relevant to your stream.

Though you might not be attending to your account with the same fervor as those of us in the trenches, there is definitely something to be said for those who show their followers that they are paying attention and taking in what is being said. Someone who is excellent at this is @GaryVee. He is responsive to those who attempt to interact with him, he reaches out to those who reference him: and it turns his followers into fans… into customers.

Promotion is a huge part of why we are all here, but if I’m sitting through your propaganda (as I ask those who follow me to sit through my own), show a bit of your personality as well. If you are a “personality” then I assume you must have one. Show it! Post an unrelated link once in a while. Tell a joke. Share your thoughts on a movie you recently saw or a book you read. What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? Though too much of this can be tiring, a taste of it here and there makes those who follow you feel that they know you a little better. The more we relate to you the more we trust what you have to say.

Some people have streams that are consistently either always positive and optimistic or always negative and pessimistic. Quite possibly, that is part of your “personal brand” but real people are made up of varying shades of gray. Behind every personal brand is… ready for it? A PERSON. If all you do is gripe, complain, or rant… that grows tiring after a while. If every day you are a ray of sunshine it comes off as inauthentic. There is nothing wrong with admitting you are having a bad day or that something did not go right for you. Honestly, it makes you more relatable.

As more and more people clamor to understand Twitter, figure out the tricks of the trade, and ride your coattails into Web 3.o… what are you going to do to continue to set yourself apart? How are you moving us all forward? Are you in innovator… or will you evaporate as the playing field levels?

According to NeilsenWire, more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return from month to month. For the 10% of us that are responsible for 90% of Twitters content, these abandoned accounts act as dead weight. They’re empty seats in the auditorium.

Enter UnTweeps. UnTweeps connects to your Twitter account and allows you to filter out stale users by entering a number of days (30, 60, 90) since the users last Tweet. It then shows you a list of Twitter slackers  you can unfollow with a simple click. UnTweeps also allows you to create a “white list” of those who you still want to keep around. You don’t want to accidentally unfollow your mom, now do you?

You don’t have to answer that.

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