Please Don't Vomit on my Facebook Status

As a social media enthusiast, I am very active on Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn (and moderately active on Digg and Delicious and a few other sites). I focus my energy and attention with the masses. In a recent survey done for one of my volunteer projects, the top three social media sites identified by the respondents were those that I use voraciously. As an enthusiast, I follow other enthusiasts, power users, "experts" and Marketing professionals.

Many of the tips for successful social media activism includes regularly updating your Facebook status, commenting on others and in general, using social media tools to be social. I often try to follow the rules to engage the people around me. I have posted on status updates either offering support if someone comments about struggles, enthusiasm when they experience lifes triumphs both small and huge and general fun comments on their status updates.

I update my status on facebook often - but try not to do it too often so as to annoy my friends. While I have close to 200 friends on facebook and frequent commentaries can get lost in the shuffle of everyone else in my feed. I always try to remember there are many people on facebook, and friends to me, that have few friends, so more than a handful of status updates in a day may just leave them with "too much Jayna" syndrome (I know, there's no such thing as "too much Jayna", but I try to do unto others...). I also try to make MOST of my status updates interesting...as the "going to sleep now", "bored", "it's time to get out of work" posts are annoying as the quizzes with the endless options for comparison to cars, tv characters, songs, colors and farm animals.

An example of appropriate & appreciated commenting!

Nothing, however, nothing annoys me more when someone vomits TMI all over my status updates. Posted above is a snapshot from my update stream taken tonight with a great example of how to do it right. But within the last week, a casual friend (as in someone I would say "Hi" to if I saw them out, but wouldn't make plans to see them in the offline world), over shared to the point where I almost deleted their post. I made a comment about how I realized that this coming September was the first in many that did not require back-to-school prep since I now have my Master's degree. My *friend* wrote a running commentary of how they have almost finished school, classes needed are not open - blah, blah, blah, blah - you get it. It was way over the top, grammatically catastrophic and all around too much information from someone I don't see as a close friend. My post was written in an unmistakeable tone of mini-celebration of a newly discovered stepping stone after a huge life milestone. This person was eager to relate to me, but missed the mark and did nothing but complain at me.

What is the take-away from this...well first, I just got to rant a little about something that irks me. The second take-away - PLEASE THINK BEFORE YOU POST ANYTHING! This is a mild example of web 2.0 irritation, but worth thinking about. People are annoying, not everyone likes everyone - even if they are facebook friends with you. If you're going to post, especially a comment to someone you don't know very well, be thoughtful. Consider the tone of the post and keep your response aligned with their tone. (Also, please don't think I'm complaining about people communicating with me on facebook, I love the conversations I can have with people I otherwise would not know anymore. I simply wanted to post something relevant and worthy of though this week.)