Quoted on CNN.com - A great piece, but context is needed

So a few weeks back I was contacted by a writer from CNN.com who had seen an old post on this blog about Defriending and whether it was generational. She was doing a piece on defriending using social media and the different ways people reacted to it, and wanted to know about my experiences with it.

The story can be found by clicking here. I think it is a good piece that definitely gives a well rounded view of how a number of different people handle defriending on social media sites, how people feel, and it even has some science included in it with the research that was done.

As you scroll about 3/4 of the way down the piece, you see a few quotes from me, and I wanted to talk about the context in which they were made. (One of the positives of having a blog, right? The ability to give context to things you've said!)

Throughout my conversation with the writer, who as I said did a great job with the finished piece, I talked about value. The fact is, I want to receive (and provide) value in my interactions within the social web. I don't necessarily think the quotes that were used reflect that fact, so here's my context.

My first quote, which talks about the people whom I defriend, was in the context of me not necessarily receiving the value I had expected from my connections with those specific people. There are many, many people I do find value from, but my litmus test is whether someone is providing me value. That is how I have made my decisions on the people I have defriended (which is a pretty small number honestly).

Moving onto my second quote about ending online relationships, I think it comes back to value. What I said is the way I feel - if someone decides to no longer follow or connect with me on the social web, they obviously weren't getting the value that they thought they were going to. That's OK with me... I don't want someone hanging on just because they don't want to hurt my feelings, and I would expect that would be how most people would feel.

This experience being interviewed was an interesting one... I was torn on whether I wanted to participate, and after deciding I wanted to and seeing the story, I think it was a worthwhile experience.

Oh, and by the way, my fellow ASAE Communications Section Council Member, Cecilia Sepp, was also quoted and did a nice job of getting her position across. While she and I differ in how we use our social networks, I think we both agree that this experience was a fun one!