How can social networking be improved?

In what ways can your Social Networking experience be improved or added to?

• For example, are there elements from your real life that are missing from your 'on-line life'.

• Answer:

  My opinion is that the best way to optimize your experience with any social media platform is to optimize your presence on it. The social media world is extremely fragmented if you don't filter it properly, which can lead to a lot of wasted time spent sifting through content to find what is really valuable for you. For me, optimizing my social presences involves meticulously concocting lists, groups, "circles," and any other labeling tools I can employ to help break apart the content on that platform. For Facebook, I trimmed my friends list down considerably, removing old contacts from college that were added with no regard as to whether or not I actually knew or had ever met the individual I was accepting. A simple way to trim your friends list is to look at your birthday notifications. If you see that it is one of your contacts' birthday and you don't feel compelled to call that person to wish them a happy birthday, you can probably unfriend them. On Twitter, I consolidate the people I follow into meaningful lists, which allows me to access different types of information at the click of a button. I follow over 700 people, which would make absorbing valuable content nearly impossible without proper organization. The same holds true for recently launched Google+ and its "circles" functionality. The principles of organizing the users you are connected to on a given platform apply to pretty much every social media platform out there, so I do my best to employ them whenever possible in order to optimize my experience. Hope this is helpful!