Twitter I’ve slimmed down recently. It’s what I check the most. If a company/feed links to Facebook or a newsletter, I’ve stopped following them. Until Twitter offers a better search, I prefer an e-mail newsletter archived in my GMail that I can find later. If the company doesn’t reply when I ask questions, I’ve also stopped following them. This includes social media community managers who prefer e-mail. heh Same goes for gurus/hoohahoftheminute… unless… the content is REALLY good. Otherwise, if they’re such a big shot, I’ll see their blogs/revelations/links retweeted by people I trust. When I don’t have time, I do have a private Twitter list that I check. It consists of about 20 people/orgs.

My LinkedIn is small enough that I can check that feed once a day. And well, 75% of the time people have posted content I’ve already seen. I do get e-mail notifications about my LinkedIn Groups. I check subject lines and then archive if it doesn’t mean anything at the moment. I have a pretty good photographic memory, so it’s important I read/see the headline so it’s somewhere in my head in case I need it later.

My GMail is a little bit out of control since. as I mentioned, I like to read every newsletter that I get. I also don’t delete people’s e-mails like some people do when they “cleanse” their mailboxes. I just think that’s rude. That being said… I have about 30 folders in my personal GMail alone. Yeah. It’s true. But, hey it’s my system and I’m stickin’ to it… for now.

I love your comments on email newsletters, and am with you in having recently unsubscribed from all but the most valuable (Hello, Old Navy and 30% off!).

And yes, here’s to spurts. My consumption definitely goes in fits and starts, but that seems to mimic the inconsistent nature of the quality of what’s out there–that goes in fits and starts, too.

Thanks for reading and commenting, Karen!

A fb friend the other day posted that she was closing her eyes and just hitting the delete button on 13,000 inbox email messages. It made me cringe, but I’ve done the equivalent of that with some of my other online media consumption.

First, I unsubscribed from all the LinkedIn group push email notifications/digests. I know where LinkedIn is. My group memberships are still on my page. I can still find these guys. When I want to engage in that part of the conversation, I can get there. I’ve been disappointed in the quality of conversations there, so this is partly a knee-jerk reaction to feeling the signal:noise ratio was too off.

Then, I count on my FB friends to filter the news. When the same article shows up in my feed two, three times, then I consider reading it. Some of my friends in certain communities seem to just blindly forward some articles without reading them in any detail, so sometimes I get some losers (today was one of those days – an article that was attempting to debunk a scientific journal article in a methodical way but didn’t make any sense while doing so. Looked good, read poorly, I didn’t repost.) Mostly, though, if I read a few paragraphs and like them, I repost.

This does two things – my fb friends love it because I am a member of some niche communities that many of them are not, so they gobble up these wide-reaching articles I post. Second, it makes it so I can find the blinkety blinkety article again. Can’t tell you how often I’ve read a yummy recipe but then lost track of it. Posting things on my own wall gives me at least a temporary paper trail (I find it cumbersome to go back more than one page on my FB wall, so I only use this for a day or two storage. More permanent storage and I either bookmark the link or email it to one of my sisters.)

I’ve been aggressively managing down my subscriptions to newsletters that are junk – places that ask you for your email address but then just deliver you junk mailers daily or even less often but still devoid of content or any real value. Note to JCrew – it’s not a “great sale” to get 10% off and free shipping for over $150. No need to special email me for that puppy. I figure that’s the ENTRY point for an online shopping experience…email me the OUTFITS, email me the EXPERIENCES, email me the BIG HUGE DISCOUNTS, the additional % off clearance, the new collections arrivals (even without discounts, so I can see how unfashionable I now am) – etc.

I, like your previous poster, have also begun totally ignoring twitter followers. Don’t have time. I only use twitter marginally, I much prefer the FB interface and two-way conversation.

I also realize and recognize that, as with other things, other media types, other ways of getting around digitally, I consume media in spurts. There are weeks/months where I’m on a kick of checking a set of blogs/commenting/etc. and then kind of forget about them for a while. There are online communities that I drop in on periodically and then drop out of. I think this is the nature of our 2010 online life and I’ve tried to reach a place of satisfaction about it. It’s not ideal, but it’s a compromise…the alternative being to go batshit crazy from media overload.

Wow, I rambled all over with this but you’ve given me the beginnings of a new blog post for myself on this topic so thanks!

First to manage all the Twitter new follower notifications, I basically ignore them. There are so many would-be gurus playing the Twitter following game that it was taking too much of my time to review new followers. I send new follower notifications to gmail, where I have set up a filter to keep them out of my inbox. When I do want to check them, I just type Twitter into the gmail search box and there they are. The downside is that unless a new follower engages me, it’s unlikely I will follow them back. The upside is I have more time.

Next I use Hootsuite and Twitter lists to manage my streams. I have seven separate lists and each has their own column in Hootsuite organized left-to-right by their importance to me. New follows or followers go in one of those seven lists or they just become part of my general stream, which has its own column too. When I fire up Hootsuite, I engage my columns left to right. My unlisted Twitter stream is the far right column. The amount of time I have dictates how far I get. I try to get to the unlisted stream once per day.

That’s my Twitter system.