More people in my industry are attempting to ‘friend’ me – possibly, as George points out, for the “thought leader” connection – and like Suzi I prefer to keep FB for genuine interaction with real friends. So I’m starting to use the Lists facility and change the settings appropriately so I can restrict who sees what. Eventually I suspect a Page will be better for this.

I’ve also unfriended anyone who shamelessly uses the medium to bombard me with their business info – if I’m genuinely interested in their business I’ll become a fan on their Page instead.

I use LinkedIn for professional exposure and appreciate the higher-level global discussion forums that are available there. I only joined Twitter to follow the 30days segment so my settings are completely private and I don’t tweet – however I find it more convenient to follow the conversation on FB where I tend to log in at least once a day. And the chat facility is convenient too.

Then there’s Skype – great for international phone calls and messaging.

In the end it comes down to time available and what you’re naturally comfortable with – all SM requires a substantial investment of time to obtain value from it – and as I’m never one for random small talk in the real world Twitter is unlikely to be something I’ll bother with – prefer to say more, less often and only to those who are likely to be interested!

Facebook has a feature called Publisher Control (for some users it’s already working, and soon it will be for all Facebook users) — which will allow you to control who gets to see ANY posting you make to your wall.

For example, you might set the default that only certain Friend Lists (e.g. Personal Friends, Family) can see your wall postings (status updates, etc.) or, that it should be invisible by default to certain other Friend Lists (e.g. Professional Contacts).

Would that change your strategy? With this setting, you can now friend anyone who wishes to friend you, without revealing more than you actually want.

Also, people tend to like to be “friends” with thought leaders instead of just a “fan”. It creates more loyalty. This is why I accept almost all friend requests on Facebook. I, of course, segment people by Friend Lists, and only pay attention to the updates of my VIPs (clients, partners, prospective clients and partners) and certain influencers.

I’ve also begun to use Tweepler to help ‘sort’ my followers / following between those who I may have to talk with now, those that I may not want to lose connection with but that for now I can ignore them. Helps clean the timeline for twitter.

it is still in Beta so it can be clumsy.