Controlling Social Media Noise Levels

One of the biggest complaints I hear from parents using social media (for themselves) is the "noise". Noise comes from some social media applications not interacting with each other or getting more functionality then you need.  I just posted about Facebook Connect and Yahoo Open to connect between social media sites, which is a step in the right direction. I don't hear that complaint from the tweens/teens who seem to thrive on social media noise. When parents join one social platform to make business or social connections, they also are exposed to other applications of no interest (i.e. stop poking me...). ReadWriteWeb just posted this morning that filtering will be the next step for social media:

"How does this affect noise levels? If you're using a service to promote content, you may be considered noisy to those that are looking for conversations. If you're using a platform to keep in touch, then those looking for content and in depth conversation surrounding particular content would need a way to block out idle chatter."

I was just talking to one social media savvy mom who explained that even using Twitter is confusing - some moms use Twitter just to converse while some use it to share links or publicize posts. Both are valid uses of Twitter but the social tweets may not like the publicity tweets (and visa versa). I use Facebook and Twitter for both reasons, especially now that I installed Tiny Twitter and Facebook Mobile to my BlackBerry Curve. I also happy when my friends share their thoughts or links with me.

But I do feel overwhelmed with trying to decide how to use the different social media platforms in a way that controls the noise. I try to only "friend" people I know or that have associations with me and stay away from adding applications that have the word "poke", lead to dizzy graphics appearing on my profile or are not useful to me even if my friends are using them. Any other ideas?

Related: ReadWriteWeb - Six Ways To Filter Your RSS Feeds