Where Double Entendres Come to Flourish | By Teresa Basich

One of my most valuable traits and biggest character flaws (yep, you heard right) is my brutal, unwavering honesty, especially about myself. For the life of me I just cannot put on a front, I’m horrible at lying, and I live in the land of wearing my heart on my sleeve. Okay, that last bit is slightly overdone, as there’s much more to it than that, but it’s the easiest way to put it.

Unsurprisingly, this honesty shines through in the way I behave online. Rarely do I take people to task or dig into others, though; my honesty is most obvious in my distinct inability to filter my depressive moments. So maybe we shouldn’t call it honesty so much as a lack of emotional filtering. Maybe. Semantics. Anyway. If I’m feeling crappy, if I’ve had a bad day, if I want to go cry in the corner, well, I say it. Openly. And people sometimes respond, and sometimes they don’t, but it’s out there for folks to see and do with what they will.

When I did all this onliney stuff for myself, this habit wasn’t so much of an issue. But, as it says in my bio over there on the right, I work for a SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING TECHNOLOGY company, so I’m all over this place like a pre-teen on Justin Bieber. But in a professional way. At this point in my life, the personal and professional lines of my online interactions are as blurry as they’ve ever been for me, and some of my habits that have previously been accepted without question are now biting me in the tukhus, most noticeably this painful honesty bit.

In thinking about how to handle this issue I started tossing around the idea of cutting down my Twitter following. The more I read and see going on around me, the more I want to speak up and grab someone’s attention, be part of the fray, dispel the feeling that I’m on the outside looking in. Yes, I’m working on this. But do you see the logic here? The less noise and fray to get caught up in, the less I’ll want to toss myself in the ring haphazardly; the more focused my attention is, the more focused and valuable my participation will be.

So, as this idea of cutting back my following was planting its stakes in the forefront of my mind I learned that Tamsen McMahon, a woman I greatly respect, had recently gone through the business of significantly cutting down her Twitter stream, inspired by the flawless tweets and Twitter management of the inimitable Meg Fowler.

We ladies got to chatting and the reason Tamsen whittled her following so drastically, and why Meg has always kept her following relatively small, can be summed up in one word: Value. And that’s just it. We, collectively, have to be able to absorb value to provide value. We need to be inspired to provide inspiration. See what I’m saying?

So much of my Twitter stream is filled with folks I followed back when I was just starting down this crazy road, more than a year and a half ago. That’s a long time in the digital world, and so much has changed both for me and for my followers. Hell, when I take a moment to poke around a bit I usually find those folks aren’t following me anymore anyway. Why continue the non-relationship? If we aren’t talking with one another, if we aren’t clicking on each others’ junk, what’s the point?

Look, I understand etiquette and I know there are more than a few people out there who will tell me this sort of culling is rude and self serving. But you know what? It’s not just about me. If cutting back is what it takes for me to provide real value to you, dear follower, then would you advocate it? If focusing my attention on fewer people means I can share better content and have more interesting and useful conversations with folks, then would you be okay with it? If doing this means I can truly be as professional as you need me to be, would you accept the possible cut?

There’s so much more to this conversation — especially the exploration of being honest with ourselves in this space, and finding the strength to behave in ways that are the most useful to us and to our friends and acquaintances online — but let’s stop here. What say you on on cutting down your Twitter following? In a bigger context, how do you feel about cutting down all your online networks? Is it time to take a step back and hone in on what really works for you? Or are you gaining value from having a large network to check in on? Share your thoughts with me, please.

Note: I’ve given the Twitter list thing a shot and, early on, find it redundant, but I’m going to try it for the rest of this week to see if I can’t make it work before taking my Twitter stream apart.

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