How To Filter And Manage Your Online Social Life
You love your friends and enjoy your acquaintances, but their Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/MySpace activity is killing your productivity. Here’s the two ways, “sledgehammer” and “scalpel,” we recommend for keeping yourself in the loop while minimizing constant distractions.
Photo by Pipe .
Before we pull out the big guns, make sure you’ve taken a good look at the social sites you use and the information filtering features they offer. Facebook, for instance, offers a really great “Hide” tool that you get by hovering over the right-hand side of any update on your main “News Feed” page—click it, and you can either stop hearing from Suzy TalksTooMuch, or prevent anyone from ever telling you which Lord of the Rings race they’d belong to.
Also, these tools won’t be new to regular readers with a flair for the web, but they are good at what they do, and worth forwarding to friends and relatives you’ve heard complaining about being overwhelmed. There’s no substitute for willpower and time rationing, of course, but let’s be realistic and show you how to manage your compulsive time-wasters:
The Sledgehammer: NutshellMail
It might seem counter-intuitive to sign up for another web service to majorly reshape the others, but you have no idea what kind of power NutshellMail can give you. It solves what we’ll call the Email Alert Circle, which goes something like this:
- You log into social sites and speed-read all the new stuff, but it’s destroying your free time, and your brain! It’s just too much. You stop visiting so often, but wish you could still get the most relevant stuff from them. So you switch to…
- Oh, look, email alerts! Now you can get just the direct messages, replies, and relevant friend posts. Two weeks later …
- You’re now avoiding your email inbox and decide it, too, is just too much.
So get a free account at NutshellMail. Authorise it to parse your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and/or LinkedIn accounts, and it takes all those “John Smith commented on your status” and “Lindsay Jones sent you a direct message” emails you really don’t need to see Right This Minute and delivers them in a digest whenever and however you want them.
“But my Twitter replies are crucial to my self-est..I mean, it’s an of-the-moment service!” you say. Fine—go ahead and schedule your NutshellMail updates to arrive every so many hours, depending on your addiction. You’ll still get all the updates for everyone you’re following, and you won’t even have to hop into Twitter.com/TweetDeck/Tweetie/whatnot to reply, because NutshellMail lets you @ reply via email links.
For those who can be realistic about how connected they need to be, NutshellMail takes the constant back-to-work hurdles of email updates, known as bacn in some circles, and pounds them into one flat page of your kinda-need-to-know.
The Scalpel: RSS Filtering
Maybe you’re not ready to give up on as-they-happen social updates entirely. Or maybe even your NutshellMail round-ups are still filled with updates you don’t care about, from people you can’t unfriend, but don’t want to follow. RSS to the rescue!
RSS, in the simplest terms, is a stream of the latest headlines, posts, and other updates from web sites that change frequently. Just like weblogs, most of the major social networks offer RSS feeds of your friends’ activity. Let’s run through setting up a feed reader, grabbing the feeds from your social sites, and then sifting the cruft out of them.
What works best will depend on your computer preferences, but here’s a few casual, non-programmer-level options that everyone can use:
Google tools: If you’re a Gmail user, it’s fairly easy to add an feed reader to the sidebar, which provides an easy glance at what’s happening without forcing you to click away. You could get even more discrete by adding your social feeds to the top-scrolling Web Clips. And if iGoogle is your start page, you can create a few boxes that contain all your social chatter. Click the “Add Stuff” link at the far right of your page, then look at the bottom-left of the page it links you to for an “Add Feed or Gadget” button. Paste in an RSS feed, and you’re good to go.
Dedicated Feed Reader: If it looks like you’re going to have a lot of material to get through every day (and, hey, that’s why you’re reading, right?), you might want to get set up with something a bit more powerful than a small widget on a web page. Here’s our shortlist: Use FeedDemon for a dedicated Windows program, its sibling NetNewsWire on Macs, or read on the web with Google Reader. All those options are fairly powerful, offer offline access, and make reading through a whole lot of news a lot easier. Want to have both online and desktop access to your social and other feeds? Grab a copy of FeedDemon’s 3.0 beta that syncs to Google Reader, and you can check your feeds at your computer or anyone else’s.
Now, if you’re wondering where to grab those feeds, here’s the lowdown:
Facebook: Click on Inbox after logging in, then click the Notifications tab near the top of the centre panel. The link for your friends’ status updates is on the right. Note, however, that Facebook’s feed only covers straight-up status updates. For the whole firehose, you’ll need to install a Facebook app like Newsfeed RSS.
Twitter: Scroll down to the bottom of your right-hand bar at Twitter.com, and there’s a link for “RSS Feed.” Individual Twitter names also have their own feeds in the same location. Most browsers will also detect these feeds and put an orange icon in the right-hand edge of your address bar, which you can click or right-click to copy and access.
LinkedIn: Scroll down on the main landing page to “Network Notifications,” and click or right-click and copy the address from the orange icon.
MySpace: Unfortunately, only individual friends’ MySpace blogs have RSS feeds. If you’ve got a few friends who update their blogs, though, you can follow their musings from the right-hand links at the top of their blog.
So now you’ve got a whole mess of RSS coming your way—what to do with it? Filter them, combine them, send them do your email, and make sure you never have to hear about “Which X Are You?” results again. Here are the tools to get that done:
- Filtering: FeedRinse is the multi-tool for cutting out authors, keywords, profanity, or anything else. Filter My RSS is the more simple keyword solution.
- Combine them: If you don’t want to get technical and just want a master feed of a whole bunch of friends’ feeds, RSS Mix and FeedCombine are your best bets.
- Deeper Filtering and Mixing: Want to poke around a bit more in what makes it through your distraction filter? FeedDemon, mentioned above, lets you create “watches” for keywords and strip out items you don’t want to see. Beyond that, there’s the Grand Puba of RSS tools, Yahoo Pipes.
Don’t let the geeky-looking graphics or name scare you off! Yahoo Pipes is actually pretty easy to get going with, once you learn what it’s trying to do. Gina walked us through creating a “Master Feed” with Pipes that offers some how-to details.
If you’re more of a visual learner, try Digital Inspiration’s video walkthrough:
Those are two effective ways to turn the firehose of social media updates into a manageable stream, but we want to hear what you’ve got, too, so tell us how you filter and condense your social updates in the comments.
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@doctorj: Do you have a choice? Because I pull from several peoples feeds and have never needed to worry about a password.
@[ping.fm]
doctorj
Digsby monitors all of the sites you've mentioned and notifies you, and does much more..
See digsby.com for what it can do..
I need something that will feed all of my social sites (yes, it's a cop-out, but whatever). Let me type 140 characters and send it to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and everything else, all at the same time. Let me post my blog to all (including blogger.com and whatever other location), in one click. I'd love that one!
JessCurious
Twitter's RSS feeds are password protected. You can use them by using [] username:password@ twitter.com /statuses/friends_timeline/usernumber.rss (spaces included so that Gawker doesn't process it as a link)
doctorj
@kerim: I'm surprised that they didn't mention Digsby the IM client. It connects all your IM accounts, and can do Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, ect. Oh well...
Daniel Nadeau
I'm surprised you didn't mention Otherinbox.com, which offers unique e-mail addresses for each service you sign up for, as well as an RSS feed of all those e-mails. It can even filter your Gmail inbox for you if you want.
kerim
Obvious but can't be overstated: please don't feel pressured to keep up with social networks. Actually observe how they're benefiting your life, what you're getting out of them, if you're just making "small talk" with others or if big ideas are coming together for action. It's great to learn new systems and feel the freshness, and fun goes in hand with results, but don't let social media overhead become a self-perpetuating trap. And don't be fooled by snake oil either.
The described methods above might work well for me if my arrangement was more complex, but to set expectations, I make it clear how to best contact me. For example, on my Flickr profile, which I have an extensive presence on, I say to use my website's contact page instead of FlickrMail. I like to ensure people who really want to reach me CAN, and that I'll be reasonably responsive. That is one of the core tenets of social networking after all.
I heart uber-aggregators like FriendFeed, if you haven't used one give it a try. I haven't caught onto ping.fm because it doesn't have a pressing spot in my online lives, but I do have my Twitter updates sent to Facebook - this is one example of making it easier to have your status change in multiple places.
It's pretty amazing to see all the inter-connectivity out there to streamline all this social networking stuff.
My favourite right now:
I like to share items in Google Reader, but hardly anyone I know uses Google Reader. So, I went to twitterfeed, add the RSS of my shared items, and twitterfeed adds those to my ping.fm update.
This is where it gets good... ping.fm updates the shared item to my facebook status, my twitter page, and my Google Talk status. I have different friends mixed up among those three services, so this way I can broadcast to all of them.
I know this sounds like a big ego trip, but really, I just like to share cool stuff with my friends.
Use Gmail to filter the messages for Facebook and Twitter into seperate labels and archive.
Charles Ip
@B-Dubs: Wow! Nutshell mail is sweet. Now I don't even have to log into any sites to find out anything relevant.
I also recommend [ping.fm.] It is a service that allows you to update your statuses without having to login to the mentioned social networking sites, and it supports a whole lot of em.
I'll have to check out nutshell mail though.
@doctorj: Oh I see. Thanks for clarifying that.
@wewillchange wants you to @trackswine: Feeds for individual users updates (user_timeline) aren't password protected, but user friend timelines (i.e. the feed for the statuses of everyone you follow - friends_timeline) are.
doctorj
I use digsby and friendfeed to manage my updates when I'm in an environment without digsby. It seems to be working pretty well.
WilonaEumaeus
I keep my social network email notifications filtered into certain folders, that way I don't feel overwhelmed. When I'm ready to focus on a particular network, I just pop open that folder and go through the requests and messages.
Is it just me or is Newsfeed RSS gone from Facebook?
Hesadanza
I have one suggestions: stop registering for every friggin' network that you come across. Just one is fine, you are still cool: except if that one is MySpace :(((
reg4c
@doctorj: Thanks, will check it!
JessCurious
Great article.
I agree with the above commenter who stated that you don't have to keep up with everything out there. I tried that for a while, and it was a huge waste of time for me, not to mention I got really stressed because I was worried about missing something. I have a Facebook account that I check regularly because it's filled with people I know, a Twitter account that I push my site feeds through, and that's.....it. I have a languishing Friendfeed account as well, but I found that to be completely anti-productive. Social networking is great, but don't let it control your life.
Can someone please relay to me the value of twitter and facebook?
Am I the only one in America who abhors online socializing?
sschaper
Make one page for all of your network feeds at Twted.com
Matt Hrushka
http;//ping.fm easily manage all your social networking sites all in one fell swoop.
Where's "Determine if it's important"
Some social networks, especially twitter, can be a collosal waste of time. Don't even bother trying to stay on top.
Yes I totally agree being on these social sites takes away atleast couple of hours of your productive time. Why social sites? Can't do it with email?
Narayan Kumar
wow, and I thought I was the only one that ever used Yahoo pipes.
aerospaceman
I use Netvibes: One tab with widgets for twitter, twitter search and Facebook. Set it as my homepage so I only check my social networks periodically, instead of constantly.
StandishMacGuyver
@reg4c: Well said! I just use Twitter & Facebook. That's it.
dezfutak
I took a different approach. I update whenever I can, and get updated whenever I can. These may mean daily. It may mean, when I am busy in my literal life, days or more between logins. The contacts who understand me don't have an issue with this, or they know how to reach me in case something is urgent. The others dissapear from from my contact list. I'm left with a core of valuable and understanding friends.
MatildaBabakin
Merge most of your social feeds with Twted.com
LeanderLupus
No mention of Cuesense.com CueSense is a news feed filter and trends site. Use CueSense to filter the noise from your news feeds, get summaries of hot topics, research trends, and get instant cues when you search, shop, or browse the web. Easy Filtering Easy Filtering CueSense automatically tracks hot and rare tags and skips trivial content Relevant Contextually Relevant Cues are matched with web page content Trusted Trusted Cues See cues only from friends or experts you subscribe to!
SanandaTubero
@kerim: I'm concerned about the privacy policy at otherinbox.com. I had trouble accessing their terms of use and privacy policy from the registration form. It could be a coincidence. I got it from the bottom and inside it says:
We may make the email addresses of our users available to other organizations whose products or services we think you may find interesting. If you supply us with your postal address online or we receive it through one of our relationships, you may, receive mailings from other third party companies. These third party companies may use the information that you provide to OtherInbox or OtherInbox receives from other sources to deliver you mailings with offers about goods and services that may be of interest to you. We use a third party company to distribute our offers.
disabledbobcat
Ok. I... uh.. I don't love my friends. I like them I guess. As for aquaintances..... they're just stick figures to be used and disposed of as I choose, depending on how useful they are in furthering my personal agenda. :)
paintbox
How I filter and manage my online social life? Easy. Deleted all my profiles, and only check e-mail once a day. Leaves time to meet people in-person.
TSMontana
@Hesadanza: I'm not at all sure, but they may have demoted it to an option. You might need to put it back manually.
paintbox
@disabledbobcat: ...hat's one ugly '95ish spam conversion policy. Thank's for the heads up!
ok, i can get an rss feed for notifications, but i can't find the status update feed anywhere.. facebook says it's on your friends page in the left column, but it's not..
anyone?
This is an awesome article, Kevin!
I use NutshellMail, and have been for at least 6 months...it really helps to stay on top of things without having to log in every 5 minutes into a handful of sites.
I hadn't realized Facebook notifications can come into an RSS feed--I'll incorporate that into my Reader. Great tip.
Thanks!
Yep - seconding Digsby.
Andy Hilal
digsby is all i really need to use, and it seems so much simpler.
NicolesBoots
@sschaper:
if you abhor online socializing, why are you commenting in a forum? :)
(also, facebook and twitter help you to keep in touch with friends you don't necessarily get to see in person)
NicolesBoots
+1 Digsby
federline
@sschaper: @sschaper: @NicolesBoots: Eh. Your point is well taken, but not well made, in my opinion. To me, 'real' online socializing is like attending a party. Commenting in a forum is the partying equivalent of putting a bumper stick on your car. Not, socializing, but commenting to the person behind me in traffic.
sschaper
For combining feeds xFruits is worth taking a look at. It does a handful of other useful things as well.
[xfruits.com]
BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH: That is the exact error I am getting on MY computer..the IRQL one...what is wrong?
I have a secondary hardrive with bad sectors..but up til now it hasn't caused me any trouble. Any suggestions?
Lana Dee
No mention of Cuesense.com CueSense is a news feed filter and trends site. Use CueSense to filter the noise from your news feeds, get summaries of hot topics, research trends, and get instant cues when you search, shop, or browse the web. Easy Filtering Easy Filtering CueSense.com automatically tracks hot and rare tags and skips trivial content Relevant Contextually Relevant Cues are matched with web page content Trusted Trusted Cues See cues only from friends or experts you subscribe to!
JessicaPaddock
Anybody know of apps. That join 'all' or most of the social networks in one go? Otherwise I have to spend loads of time signing up to all the networks. Nutshell mail is great. I already use that since the last LH post.
AlisaEunomia
most people won't bother or even take the effort to use any of these tools except for the web savvy, who should be smart enough not to let social sites kill your life! these sites are for expressing yourself...anything else and you're just being a tool.
JanetCabeal
Hear, hear! IMO, that's the best thing you can do to this...social networking thing: Just don't sign up for too many of them. I made the mistake of doing so about a year ago, and I paid for that--heavily. Sign up for services that are meaningful, like Facebook and/or Orkut. They have decent facilities, and allow you a lot of elbow room for your own personality. But don't go overboard on the S-N intertubes; Twitter is worthless as a means of communication, and all the FB clones (Bebo etc.) are just troublemakers that are NOT worth the effort.
SadafLoralee
I agree with underdose and was a bit surpised not to see more commentary on it on Lifehacker. I've been using it for about a month and it makes handling multiple e-mail accounts plus FB and Twitter very manageable. I can also IM on FB using it and actually keep a history, which is not available using FB in a web browser.
SukritiEunomia
no FriendFeed
Tezifon Drone
Check [fonet.mobi] web site where you create a link to all your profile like friendfeed, facebook, twitter etc. It create a RSS feed for all this web site and also you can update your status on Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed.
smartmobi
Digsby makes managing all social feeds extremely manageable including twitter. Big THUMBS UP for digsby in my book!
PansyCrin