I find people incredibly interesting. I love learning how they think and why they think the way they do. I like to debate, not to be argumentative (though it often comes off that way) but because I want to see if the other person can convince me that my viewpoint is flawed. When someone proves me wrong with a well-thought-out response I gain both new insight and new respect for them. Being exposed to new information and cataloging it is an addiction for me and I thrive on conversation.

That’s my reason for participating in social media: my whole goal is to be a part of the conversation. Apparently I’m in the minority.

It seems to me that there are two other goals that are much more common: building a reputation for yourself and/or to get the most attention and keep it. Both of those goals involve a lot of rules of conduct and seem to be a lot more work than fun.

Over the past few days I’ve noticed conversations pop up on FriendFeed about the “appropriate” ways to interact with the service. FFeeders have admitted that they alter their behavior now (such as not clicking on “like” and avoiding posting things to the external networks which feed into FriendFeed) simply as to not offend their followers. There are many debates on Blogging 1.0 vs 2.0 where blog authors are expected to follow the conversation wherever it is instead of expecting it to come to them which is causing loss of attention to bloggers’ sites. FFeeders are concerned about the noise that subscribing to many people generates and fretting over how to keep it all manageable.

Who has the responsibility of attention control? Those who post or those who subscribe?

I’ve been reprimanded for declaring that I “like” and share things on FriendFeed without much thought about whether it will distress my followers, but I think the burden of filtering content should be on the subscriber. I subscribe to many people myself so I understand that it’s a hassle to filter out the noise but I would rather people post what’s interesting to them and let me figure out what I want than limit their participation to give me less noise and possibly less insight.

It’s implied that there’s a contract between followers/followees that somehow makes the followee responsible for meeting the follower’s expectations. Who is serving their followers better? Me, by being myself, posting what’s interesting to me, and participating in the conversation or the people who spin cycles in internal debate over what/whether to share because sharing might cause them to lose some followers (and attention)? As a subscriber I already spend too much time discovering what’s important to me and sharing it. I don’t have time to filter out what’s not important to each of many followers.

If I didn’t share in a way that my followers appreciated when they chose to follow me, then they wouldn’t have subscribed. I would rather have a smaller number of followers who are closely aligned with my interests than a larger group that I have to censor myself to keep. Nothing is keeping them from unsubscribing if we no longer share the same interests. Is it realistic to say that if someone chooses to follow me I am under the obligation to provide them with input of consistent quality, quantity and timing?

If everyone is expected to put their followers first, participating in social media is more like a job than for enjoyment. I already have a job (or two) and don’t need any more.

For some people it is a job. For those people interaction is all about building your “Personal Brand” and having the most followers. I don’t begrudge those people laboring over how they participate because they’re making a living off of it. But how many A-Listers can there be? If you’re not going to lose your house because you quit making ad revenue off your blog then chill-out, sit down and share stuff with me. I don’t mind if you throw me a little noise. I just want to have a conversation and maybe make a few friends.