Not Every Facebook or Twitter Post Needs to Live Forever

I'll be honest, I spent most of my weekend cleaning up my Facebook and Twitter accounts. Why?

Because on Friday I read this story from Inc which discusses an interview with Mark Cuban. In the video Cuban explains the biggest mistakes we're making with social media. Part of the issue is letting posts live forever.

To me it's not an issue of privacy, I don't care that you know that I had a cheese hot dog on a hot day in July of 2008. What I do care about is how I my appear to other people, future employers, my own kids, etc.

Think about it, are the things you posted in 2009, let alone last week, relevant anymore? Quick answer, no.

So why let it live on the internet?

My new philosophy when it comes to social media, at least on my personal account, is to delete posts a few days after I post them. It just seems smart.

What about all the stuff from 2008 to now? There's an app for that!

On Twitter you can use the app Xpire, the app also lets you put end dates on your posts so they'll automatically self destruct at a scheduled date and time.

Cleaning up Facebook was a bit more tricky. I used Google Chrome's Timeline Cleaner. It didn't work perfect, but it got my posts down to a manageable level, then I went in manually to clean things up.

Even if your accounts are private, do you think it's necessary for posts from when you were 20 to remain online? Perception is reality to people, it's worth the time to clean up anything that might paint a very different picture of you.