I agree that not everyone is an attention whore, but if they have enough people that they need to use social networking with that they have to bulk-load them, then they probably are. My contact book is enormous, but I don't need a social network for most of those people. I don't need to update my coworkers on anything outside of work and I doubt businesses are using social networks for their employees to conduct business with. I certainly don't need to do social networking with someone I might have had a meal with while on a trip oversea, either. Keep them in my address book. Drop them a note sometime. Sure. But the number of people a non-attention-whore needs to interact with on a basis frequent enough to justify being part of an actual social networking application surely must be well below the "bulk loading" number?
The step of categorizing your social networking broadcast channels into proper groups has been years overdue. That's a great feature. I'm just saying that maybe people should pause and take a minute to actually do with Google+ what they originally intended to do with Facebook. You know, four or five years ago when the whole world switched over to Facebook, because it was the place you only "friended" people that you actually knew as opposed to "everyone with a pulse" that you friended on MySpace? Seems like everyone let that get away from them (and they frequently complain about how exactly that has happened to them). So instead of rushing back into the same situation, it's a great time to rethink how we're using such a service.
If I want to use bulk-import to move contacts to a more discreet sharing service, doesn't that make me the opposite of an attention whore? I doubt that most people with many contacts have acquired them for the specific purpose of seeking attention.
The step of categorizing your social networking broadcast channels into proper groups has been years overdue. That's a great feature. I'm just saying that maybe people should pause and take a minute to actually do with Google+ what they originally intended to do with Facebook. You know, four or five years ago when the whole world switched over to Facebook, because it was the place you only "friended" people that you actually knew as opposed to "everyone with a pulse" that you friended on MySpace? Seems like everyone let that get away from them (and they frequently complain about how exactly that has happened to them). So instead of rushing back into the same situation, it's a great time to rethink how we're using such a service.