Cleaner Timelines for Facebook and Google+

In both Facebook and Google+, a lot of rubbish gets served our way

Once you are connected to enough people, while you may know them, and connected, based on your shared interest in Linux or lean startups, in Facebook you get fed 5-10 pictures of kittens in teacups per day from them, and in G+, they think you would have no source for Olympics news if not for them. One man’s idea of so adorable that everyone will think so rarely is mine. You must have your pet peave varieties of posts, I would bet. Do you have a friend who buys 12 iphone apps per month, reviews them, posts and tags you – and is oblivious to the fact that youd phone is an Android? Block them, mute a post, move to “only important” (Facebook)… what to do?

Both Facebook and G+ have problems that neither is taking aim at – for timeline sanitization

In Facebook, you can “hide all from,” “unsubscribe,” “mute this post,” or unfriend/unsubscribe – when you find a “friend” is overfeeding you, and its rubbish they are laying on thick. In Google+, you can mute a post, uncircle someone, and little else. Because there is no topic tag timeline constraint system in Facebook, the best a third-party Facebook application developer could do is use facila recognition to help us eliminate of timeline-clogger: the onslaught of baby photos. Enter, unbaby.me:

That’s right, now you can replace those unwanted babies (photos! I mean baby photos – of coursethat’s what I mean) photos with something you might actually appreciate in your Facebook timeline.

The official recognition of topic tags in a social network’s databases make a huge difference

In Google+, thanks to the ability to constrain our timeline (what’s shared at us, from those we’ve circled) by a topic tag, cleaning up our timeline is far more efficient. In the Chrome Store, find the free G+ Hashtagsextension, which lets you mute tags and gradually refine your timeline. I was sold as soon as I saw I could nix #caturday once and for all:

No more #caturday, thanks to the “G+ Hashtags” Chrome extension

What does topic-tagging, tag-search and the ability to filter a social network timeline by a tag mean for you? Do you have a favorite tool for topic tag optimization?