Note: this policy is now being managed on my personal site. Please get the latest version here.
Over the past few years I have joined several social networking sites and continue to use a few of them regularly. These sites serve different purposes for me and I have started to come up with strategies of whom to connect with where. Here are the general guidelines that I have developed (subject to spontaneous change and arbitrary override).
- On Facebook, I only “friend” real life friends and family.
- On location based services (like Tripit, Brightkite), I only connect to people that I would genuinely like to meet up with when traveling and who I trust not to rob my house when I am away.
- On LinkedIn, I only connect with people that I would want to work with.
- I only follow people who inform and/or entertain me on Twitter and Friendfeed
- I have stopped joining sites like Naymz for which I can’t see real purpose.
Well, those are my rules and I’m stickin’ to ‘em… at least, for now and when I don’t forget them (LOLZ).
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One more thing… I ignore all Facebook pokes and superpokes.
I like your list, and perhaps we should all post what our policies are. One sticky area for me is online public recommendations — up until now I haven’t given or accepted public personal recommendations (for instance on linkedin), but I’m thinking of changing my own personal policy….
I recently wrote a similar policy ( http://sourceress.co.uk/index.php/contact-connect ) and have had an incredible responce to it.
Thinking about the reasons I connect in different ways on different sites has really helped me too. On twitter especially, because it’s always tough to decide wheather or not to follow someone back. Now that I have a defined set of rules, there is much less doubt and guilt.