I already follow you on that other service.

Dear friend/colleague/attractive person,

This is just a quick note to say thank you for being my friend on this social networking service. I really value our time together and appreciate the many pokes, @s, and invites that we’ve shared over the weeks/months/years. The last thing I’d want to do is sour our relationship in any way, but there is one small thing that I wanted to talk to you about.

I noticed that you’ve started automatically importing your feed from that other service. I can certainly understand why you’d want to do that. Heaven forbid that anyone miss any of your incredibly insightful commentary and linking, just because they don’t use that other service. But it creates a problem for me.

You see, I already follow you on that other service. This means that I see everything you post twice/thrice/quarce.

This puts me in something of a bind. I don’t want to stop following you on this service or that service. For one thing, sometimes you post things to this service that don’t appear in that service. For another, I’d miss out on the unique constellation of contacts and conversation that each service provides. But neither do I want to keep filtering redundant updates in each service.

There’s another, more subtle problem. This service and that service have a slightly different culture. There is a different grammar, a different tone, and even different acceptable subject matter. When you automatically import stuff from that service into this service, it can be jarring. Not dangerously so, but in a way that makes your friends/colleagues/attractive people feel like maybe you just don’t care.

So I’m writing to ask you to unlink your accounts.

You may be thinking “but what about all my friends/followers/attractive people who don’t follow me on that other service?” Well, I hate to say this, but it’s possible that they aren’t following you for a reason. Maybe they don’t like that other service. Maybe they do like that other service but they use it for a different reason and context than this service.

By all means, keep posting to each service. I value your insights, which is why I friended/followed you in the first place. And from time to time, by all means send the same message to both services, when it’s especially relevant or important. Though if you do, please take the time to format your message for each service.

I hope this letter does not come across as mean or censorious. I really do enjoy being socially networked with you in all these different ways.

It’s just that I already follow you on that other service.