contemplativeI am learning some very important lessons about interacting with others in both social networking and virtual worlds (and in some cases, the two aren't mutually exclusive).
Today, it was a case of learning what people want to know about you and what they do not.
If you strive to make friends with someone, how much information do you want? Do you want to know only what they post on twitter, facebook, forum posts - or do you wish to delve deeper and learn something about what kind of person they are, what motivates them, what opinions they have?
If you are going into business in a virtual world, how much do you want to reveal to others about yourself? Just "inworld" information, or are you willing to volunteer much more? If the latter, are you worried it will affect your business if certain people decide they don't like you?
In my case, I had someone on my twitter list and my inworld friends list who felt they got too much information on me - and they didn't just dislike it, they vehemently disliked it. I was in the habit of posting links from both my personal and VR journals to the same twitter account.
I am not passing judgment on this person, but they did teach me that not everyone you talk to wants to dig beneath your surface.
For me personally, all I ask is that if you unfriend me, tell me. You don't have to explain, just tell me, so when I go looking for you and don't find you, I don't get left wondering what happened.
In the interest of not overloading some people with information they rather not have, I have split my twittering of my personal journal to another account - http://twitter.com/magyarsaman . If you'd like to continue following posts on my personal journal, feel free to follow that one.
For me, if someone posts something on twitter that I don't want to read, I just let it pass by. People will post what they want to post.
How do YOU feel?
