The more we use social services, the more updates we provide, and typically, the more friend connections we make. For the most part, for most people, the number of connections we have on our active networks are steadily increasing.

With time, the sheer volume can be considered noise, and there comes a time to make a trim. But it can be surprisingly difficult to break a connection, or to break multiple connections, on most of these networks.

I thought I would take a look at some of the major networks I use to show who makes it easy, and wonder as to whether they can make it simpler to sever ties.

Facebook

On Facebook, you are increasingly seeing "Add as friend" buttons from suggestions, or running into friends of friends making comments on your connections' news feed.

To add a connection:

1. Click their highlighted name and get redirected to their profile.
2. Click the "Add as a friend" at the top.
3. Click "Send Request".

The request will then be approved or declined.

To unfriend a connection:

1. Click their highlighted name and get redirected to their profile.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and in the bottom left, click the small text: "Remove from Friends"
3. Click the "Remove from Friends" button that pops up.

The number of steps is the same, but unfriending is much less prominent, and "tucked away". As with friending an individual, with the exception of the friends suggestions page, you have to go one by one, profile by profile, and cannot unfriend in bulk.

FriendFeed

On FriendFeed, you can see if another user is a connection or not in a few ways. Comments from friends on items have a blue discussion bubble, and those who are not have a gray one. Also, if you mouse over someone who is not a friend, you have a "Subscribe" option. Friends' boxes just show what lists they may be placed on.


To add a connection:

1. Mouse over their ID.
2. Click subscribe.
3. Choose what friend list to put them in and hit "Subscribe".

To unfollow a connection:

1. Mouse over their ID.
2. Click on their ID name and get redirected to their profile.
3. Click unsubscribe.

It is the same number of steps, but you have to be redirected to their profile, meaning you can't unfollow them directly from your feeds, but only on their own page. You also cannot unfollow people in bulk, but you can follow people in bulk by synchronizing with Twitter or other services, such as GMail.



Google Buzz

To add a connection:

1. Click the user's ID to get redirected to their profile.
2. Click Follow.

To unfollow a connection:

1. Click the user's ID to redirect to their profile.
2. Where it says "You are following", click Stop.

Google Buzz doesn't directly show you how to unfollow a group at a time, but if you do find you are following many people...

1. Go to your own profile, such as: http://www.google.com/profiles/me.
2. Click "Your name" is following "The number".
3. This page will have "Unfollow" next to all your connections. Click unfollow for any you need, and you can reduce your connections quickly. It's one of the fastest ways I have ever seen to reduce your total count.

Google Reader

To add a connection:

1. Find a person in Google Reader.
2. Click "Follow" that person.

To unfollow a connection:

1. Click their name under "People You Follow".
2. Click "Unfollow" that person.

LinkedIn

If somebody invites you to connect on LinkedIn, adding is easy. Just click "Accept" to get connected. Otherwise...

To add a connection:

1. Find the person's profile.
2. Click "Add this person to your network".
3. Explain the connection. (Colleague/Classmate/etc)
4. Send invitation.

Surprisingly, there is NO way to unfollow or disconnect from somebody via their profile.

To unfollow a connection:

1. Go to "My Connections" under "Contacts".
2. Click "Remove Connections"
3. Select Who You Want to Unfollow
4. Click Remove Connections
5. Confirm "Yes, Remove them"

The benefit to this process is that it is relatively simple to disconnect from many at once, but you can't preview a connection if you don't recall the relationship. It is surprising that you can't unfollow via profile.

Twitter

To add a connection:

1. Go to the individual's profile
2. Click "Follow".

To unfollow a connection, there are a few ways.

1. Go to the individual's profile.
2. Select "Unfollow" from the options pull-down.

Alternatively:

1. Click the "Following" button on your own profile.
2. Unfollow one or more people listed by clicking the "Actions" button and choosing "Unfollow" for each you want to disconnect.

In most social networks, the ability to follow anyone is relatively easy. Every profile has a button that asks you to connect. Some, like Facebook, are pushing new people to you all the time. But to reduce the connections and unfollow in bulk can be more difficult, leading to links that have since faded in importance, or can be cluttered. Twitter has done a good job to let you unfollow from multiple places, and Google Buzz makes contact management very simple, from your own profile, but there are clearly ways that most sites can improve the connection experience.

At the end of January, I told you how I had recently picked up a MacBook Air to replace my aging MacBook Pro, and as part of that process, I would try to do as much as I could online instead of through desktop applications, leaving much of my rich media on the old laptop, and choosing the Web over hard disk as often as possible. A month in, it seems there is still much room for the cloud to grow, but despite the general trend for massive data growth, I still haven't used more than 30 percent of my spartan 128 GB solid state hard drive - a back of the hand measurement of how little data I am keeping with me and not leaving in the air.

As I mentioned last month, one of the first decisions I made was to keep iTunes and iPhoto data on the old laptop. I recognized I needed to keep Microsoft Office, for pure sanity purposes, but left Adobe's CS suite on the other machine.

Those applications I have downloaded have been rare, letting me tap into the cloud itself - for example, Skype, for audio phone calls and podcast recording, the Sonos controller to power the home stereo system, and Spotify, to access the on demand music network.

The goals are multiple. First, can I do a test run at being operating system agnostic, maintaining the flexibility to move toward a promised Chrome OS when it ships? Second, can I make the actual hardware insignificant, treating the new Air as a "disposable" machine, making migration to a newer device in the future simple? Third, and most important, can I find major weaknesses that continue to exist with an all cloud strategy?

At the end of February, my 128 GB solid state disk hard drive, much smaller than the 200 GB SATA disk it replaced, has 91.36 GB available, or just more than 71% of total capacity. This includes all system files, the pre-installed iLife applications from Apple, and preferences for many of the pre-installed apps. In fact, the one place I expected to consume a lot of data, with client files and PowerPoints, has proven to not be much at all. The folder for Paladin, with all client folders, is actually less than a single gigabyte.

Are there any headaches to going cloud-only (or close to it)? Sure. For somebody who uses PhotoShop a lot, the lack of PhotoShop has me reaching for it often. In the interim, for images for the blog, I've relied on lots of screen captures, and small editing in Preview. Anything stronger pushes me to the media machine. But the problems have been extremely rare. If I had an Office competitor that made it easy enough to edit all my files and save them remotely, I would be happy to give Microsoft Office the boot. But it's not there yet. And in the meantime, I am using GMail more and my Mac e-mail account less. I have been taking Zoli Erdos' advice and moving my Mac e-mail to the cloud, but that process isn't yet completed. I'll keep you posted on that, promise.

My new-ish MacBook Air isn't just lighter in terms of weight. It's massively lighter in terms of data too. It makes sense that in the future, so long as we have one place to put all our rich media, the rest of us really only need thin clients. We're getting there.

Assuming E-mail is the original social network, this Web 1.0 tool continues to have a large role in how we communicate and share ideas. With the exception of the clear GMail/Buzz integration or the recent Outlook/LinkedIn tie-up, for the most part, e-mail has not been dramatically revamped to take advantage of today's faster-moving, highly featured social networks. But despite e-mail's longevity, some basic attributes of the form continue to cause trouble between contacts who haven't mastered their core functionality. One of the most troublesome, the infrequently used, but often abused, BCC.


As you no doubt know, BCC stands for "Blind Carbon Copy", providing a way to send e-mails to people without revealing their e-mail addresses. This can be an aid for mass mailings without exposure, but also used to be sure an individual gets a note without the direct recipient's knowledge.

For every blow-up around poorly-trained marketeers who copy their entire customer base, or PR flacks who display all the intended reporters by dumping their contacts database in the TO or CC field, you have quieter mistakes that happen when the intended recipient who thought they were having a private conversation sees a third party jump into the discussion without warning. As the intended public recipient sees the third party elbow their way into the conversation, they may lose trust in the original sender, and wonder what other messages were being shared.


Some e-mail clients (such as a BlackBerry) will automatically make it clear to the recipient that they were BCC'd on a conversation, which hints they should not reply all. But not all people are as discerning and recognize their role in the world of BCC to be a silent observer. I know that when I get a BCC message that any reply I provide goes to the originator and not to the others in the thread.

Given my goal to be public about communication, my own use of BCC is extremely infrequent. Due to the potential issues that can arise as trust is perceived to be broken, I tend to follow up a BCC note to the individual saying "You were BCC'd. Make sure not to reply."

If you are someone who tends to BCC individuals as a normal course of business, I have no doubts that you can get caught by this process. Not all recipients watch the To and CC fields closely, and they may expose your willingness to overshare. With so many other ways to have private conversations 1-1, and the ease of which forwarding prior conversations via e-mail can occur, it makes sense to get above board, and preserve the BCC option for simply obscuring mass mailings.

This week, Ecademy chairman Thomas Power and I presented to a roomful of executives in various influential positions in Silicon Valley companies on leveraging social media and taking advantage of new networks or technologies to find information faster and make the right decisions at the right time. (See the presentation on 'connectedness' here)

Before he flew back to the UK, I took some time to ask him about his approach to social networks and what he thinks about connections.

Thomas, connected to more than 30,000 on LinkedIn, and endorsed by more than 700, more than double the world's second-highest profile on the site, believes strongly that any kind of limits online, from Facebook's limit of 5,000 friends (which he hit long ago) or Twitter's limiting you to 1,000 follows a day, is short-sighted and damaging to potential growth of one's network. Thomas' profile on his own network, started in 1998, without many of the limits of other companies, highlights his own connections to more than 56,000.

My own e-mail in box proves Thomas to be an incredible communicator, who tries to maintain relationships well beyond Dunbar's number. You can hear some of his thoughts below, which I recorded via CinchCast.

Disclosure: I spoke to Ecademy last year in a paid engagement and just completed another engagement with Thomas this week. It's quite possible he and I may work on many more opportunities going forward. Simply put, I like the guy.