Soraya Darabi, former social media strategist for the New York Times, described this approach as strategic: "Say you're an author, a book aficionado. Most [of your followers] have tagged music as a passion. You might want to throw them a bone about your favorite song. There are a lot of Venn diagram overlaps in this community. It's to your advantage to be as much as part of a community as possible which means engaging with people's interests." In other words, sharing personal information was a branding strategy in that it humanized businesspeople and allowed for a greater connection with their audience. This was, of course, assuming that what one shared was consistent with his or her brand-image.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 659