This is a short post about facebook status updates…in a general sense. I could be wrong, too. So if you don’t agree with me, please feel free not to pay attention to me. We all look at social media a little differently, and everyone has a right to an opinion.

Like most people, I don’t have much time to do facebook. I wish I did, but I’m usually there checking out my friends status updates about twice a day, usually five minutes at time. I was one of the first people on facebook when it started. I’ve always enjoyed it and I’ve even made a few nice friends there that I consider very close. So I take it seriously when I’m on facebook looking for individual status updates my friends have left. It keeps me connected to them in a very busy world. And I would imagine they feel the same way about my status updates.

But I will say that one thing that really irritates me is when I click over to facebook and my news feed is filled with status updates, one after the other, from someone I don’t know, and someone who has probably just started facebook and they don’t know what they are doing. It’s like I’ve never seen them before, and now, all of a sudden, they’re posting status updates a page long, about nothing of any interest at all.

There’s nothing wrong with posting one or two, maybe even three, updates in a row. I love to read new status updates from new friends. I don’t want to sound like the facebook police here. I would also imagine most people feel this way. But when people check out their news feed and they see that Betty Jane Bumpkin has left a slew of status updates about everything from her last trip to the WalMart to the plantar’s wart on the bottom of her right foot, it’s an automatic “Hide All By Betty Jane.” Maybe her good friends care. But most people don’t.

Unfortunately, Betty Jane might be a really cool lady. She might be promoting books I’d love to read, too. But because she slammed me with too much information about nothing of importance, I make a conscious decision that I don’t want to read any of her status updates.

People are far too busy nowadays to go through every single status update on facebook. And if they have over 2,000 friends, it makes it even more difficult. This bad habit of hyjacking facebook with too many updates has gotten so out of hand that I find myself doing searches for good facebook friends just to see what they are doing and ignoring all other status updates. And that’s a shame. Who knows what I might be missing?

And, like most people, I hate to unfriend anyone. But facebook has put that “hide” feature on there for a reason, and everyone uses it. They’ll never tell you. But they do use it all the time. And everyone uses it for a reason, too. So I’d be careful about going overboard on facebook, especially with long streams of status updates one after the other. What you think is going to help you get attention, might just backfire and make you invisible.