02 Jan Is the Numbers Game Over for Social Media?

Mini Me(me)

So off we go again. New year, new ideas, new intentions. And I’ve noticed a minor ‘trend’ rippling through my networks over the last week or so. A ‘mini-meme’, if you will. It’s one of being more considered in the use of social networks in 2013 – paring back on ‘friendships’ and focusing more heavily on quality. And it’s coming from all sorts of people, both casual Facebook users and some of the big hitters in the social media world. Which begs the question: is the honeymoon over?

Are social networks maturing to a point where the novelty is wearing off?

I first noticed a couple of people in my networks mentioning that they were thinking about reducing their network sizes early in December, but shrugged it off as nothing more than end-of-year naval gazing. Then over the Christmas period I saw more people taking action – culling Twitter follows and Facebook friends. They included those such as the highly-respected Jason Falls, who made a cry for more relevancy on Facebook as 2012 turned into 2013.

The comments below a post by Lindsay Bell shortly before Christmas on her abandoning Twitter are also very revealing. They talk of a boredom of surface-level connections and a desire to affect deeper relationships; trying to follow too many people and the frenetic pace this creates; and of life away from social media. And they ask how much social media do you actually need?

So what’s going on? Is it simply the introspection that greets a new year or is, in fact, the tide starting to turn in the world of social media to a new focus on smaller, tighter networks? Will you be stripping back your number of connections in the coming months?

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Posted by Paul Sutton