In this short video, I talk about what I see as the difference between noise and spam on Facebook. Everyone on Facebook is part of the noise, but not everyone is part of the spam.
Noise is something that is just part of the system. Noise is normal, expected, and you have a choice either to pay attention to it or to filter it out.
Everything that appears in your home feed on Facebook is noise. Your home feed represents the status updates of all the people you are connected to on Facebook. These “posts” originated on their profile pages, and they were broadcast to all of their connections. The only way you know those status updates exist is to log on to Facebook and view your home feed.
It is very important to remember that only you see your home feed. Yours looks different than mine because we are connected to different people; I can’t see your feed and you can’t see mine. If you think someone’s status updates appear in your home feed too often, then either get more friends or “hide” that person’s updates. I personally pay very little attention to my home feed.
Your profile page is another story. You need to be very concerned about what appears on your wall because everyone you are connected to can see that. The profile page is where the potential spamming occurs.
If you post something directly on another person’s wall, or send them a direct message, that triggers a notification that they get in their personal e-mail. If what you posted is unexpected, uninvited, and unwanted, then it will probably be viewed as spam. I personally rarely post directly on anyone’s wall, and only ever send a very small percentage of my “friends” direct e-mails through Facebook, and I don’t do that very often.
What you post on your wall is noise, what you post directly on another person’s wall might just be spam. What you post on your wall does not interrupt me, but what you post directly on my wall does.
As you strive to be professionally personal on Facebook, make sure your activity is part of the noise and not part of the spam.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!
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Hi Bret
Interesting post on Facebook, but I have to take issue with a few of your comments.
Why call postings that appear in your home feed “noise?” That certainly sounds negative. Isn’t that “noise” exactly why you joined Facebook, to keep up with your friends?
You wrote, “I personally pay very little attention to my home feed,” and instead you choose to focus on your profile page. Sounds a bit self-centered to me. Your profile page is all about you, and that’s all you care about? You’re not interested in the updates from the people with whom you’re connected? Why connect with them at all then?
Would it bother you to know that they’re not interested in your updates? I bet it would. In fact, if that were the case, why bother updating your profile page/status at all?
I think most people DO pay attention to their home feed and want to know what their friends are up to. And it must be reciprocal. If you’re not interested in them, they’re a lot less likely to be interested in you. FAIL!
Social networking is all about connecting, communicating and caring about others. If you’re not participating, then why are you there?
Lastly, you mentioned that if you send someone a message through Facebook or post something on their wall, it triggers an email to them. That’s only if you have your account settings established for NOTIFICATIONS. You can easily modify those settings so that those activities do NOT trigger an email.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
January 3rd, 2011 at 2:40 pm
Good questions, Susan. Noise for me is a technical term. it’s just another way to describe something that varies randomly as a property of how the system is set up. It is not meant to be a negative term. Noise is natural.
My point about the home feed is some people get all upset about what appears there. Don’t worry about that because no one can see it. Worry instead about how your profile looks because that is what everyone sees.
Concur that social networking is about connecting, but Twitter is the power community for me. I personally do not like Facebook, but I keep an account so I can watch what they are doing. The people I am connected to on Twitter are very focused on business and value, while most of the folks on Facebook are just having fun. I personally don’t have time to just have fun online. Twitter adds great value to the work that I do, while Facebook does not.
Thanks! Bret
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theres a cool tool for filtering out the spam and the noise, its a browser extension called FB Purity, it cuts out 90% of the spam and noise for me, you can tune it to your own particular preferences, so if you dont want to see “likes” in your feed you can tick the option to hide them, and the same goes for all the other message types that appear in the feed. it also lets you hide the panels from the right hand side of your home page. very useful too overall, i highly recommend it, you can get it here: http://www.fbpurity.com
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
January 9th, 2011 at 12:32 pm
Welcome, Melinda. Thanks for the tip on the tool Bret
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