Because Breaking Up Is Hard 2.0 Do

May 30th, 2007 Davis Posted in Technology, Web 2.0 |

They say that breaking up is hard to do, but it turns out that breaking up in a web 2.0 world can be even more complicated than break ups from the past. Social networks have made it easy to meet new people and to share pieces of your life with a larger community, but what happens after the music fades and you are not quite as enthusiastic about someone being able to stalk track your life online?

If you remove your ex from your top 8 on MySpace, will your friends start asking questions? Should you add your new girlfriend to your friend’s page or is that just tacky? If you change your relationship status on Facebook, will new love interests come out of the woodwork or will your ex-girlfriend’s social network, start asking why things didn’t work out? In the past, you could just lay low for a little while and let the tough parts blow over, but when so much of your social network overlaps with an extinguished flame, it can make it awkard to use some of your favorite sites on the net.

I don’t think that there are any easy answers to dealing with a break up, but Chris Furniss has written a funny post listing steps that you can take, if you plan on severing digital ties with a loved one. In the post, he covers the easiest way to split up your Netflix and TiVo queues, the proper etiquette for posting on Flickr after a breakup, and the best way to deal with the fallout from changing your relationship status on Facebook and MySpace.

Dating in the web 2.0 world is a lot like dating in the workplace. When it works out, it’s great, but when things get tough, it can make going into work unbearable. If you visit a site everyday and choose to date someone you meet there, good things can happen, but if bad things happen, it will take away a lot of the enjoyment you get from spending time at that community. Unlike work, you don’t necessarily have to log into MySpace everyday, but if a breakup makes you feel awkward about using the site, it can still be a drag once you’ve gotten used to visiting that community each day.

The post doesn’t address the best way to breakup with your Friendster dates or how to minimize the impact of a breakup on your more professional LinkedIn contacts, but it does raise some interesting questions about what you choose to share online and the impact that a break up might have on different services that you’ve gotten used to using. None of these tips will make a break up any easier, but with a little bit of careful planning, you can minimize the backlash from your social communities, when relationships don’t work out.