It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done. — Oscar Wilde

Before you undo everything that you have done to build a robust social network with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of friends, followers, and online connections, it might be time to ask yourself about your intent. After all, intent tends to be the most overlooked portion of social networking, much like communication.

In fact, if you are defriending, especially if you consider yourself a reformed friending enthusiast, it might be paramount to making the same mistake twice. Sure, Charlene Li is all for it and Social Citizens suggests the trend is to defriend, despite Facebook pulling the plug on Whopper sacrifices. Robert Scoble recently went out of his way to “remove the chaff” from his Twitter account on Sunday.

“I’ve analyzed the 600 people who unfollowed yesterday and the IQ of my followers just went up 217%!” he said.

But does it make sense? It depends, and not on numbers.

It depends on your intent, which is best defined by you and/or your employer’s objectives and the purpose you engaged in social networking as it pertains to each social network. So you might ask yourself, beyond those you know, who are these people?

Listeners. People on whom who you have made a positive impression, which prompted them to follow you. It might have been someone who heard you speak or read something you wrote and they hope to hear/read more.

Neighbors. Social networks, especially niche social networks, are much like neighborhoods. People who live within close proximity like to know their neighbors. It’s the same online, except geography is replaced by “topicography.”

Bloggers. Bloggers who are always looking for something they can write about, including you and/or your company.

Prospects. People who are considering you or your company for future work, possibly because someone within your social network referred you. The opportunity might not be right now, but they see potential.

Evangelists. People who, for some reason or another, feel a connection to you or your company. They want to promote you and/or your business to other people.

This doesn’t mean you have to follow everybody or accept every friend request.

Consider your intent within each social network. Is it to find potential candidates for employers? Is it to find potential employers for candidates? Is it to network with colleagues and share tips, tools, and ideas? Is it to gain exposure for yourself or your company? Is it to find someone with skill sets that you need? Is it to stay connected with friends and family?

Then whatever the intent, do that. Just never make your intent something as ridiculous as collecting as many reciprocal friends and followers as possible or following something as fleeting as a trend. It’s a waste of time and distracts from developing relationships you might value. In extreme cases, some professionals have even catered to popular strangers who will never be their friends, never buy their product or service, and never do anything except attempt to exert influence over them.

The best approach when you join a social network (and I’ve joined several to test the waters for others), starts with observing what occurs in that space. From these observations, you can decide who and how you want to engage people.

For example, on BlogCatalog.com (which is a social network for bloggers), my intent is to meet and connect with a diverse range of bloggers as part of our blogger relations efforts. So, I maintain an open door policy — if they friend me, I friend them.

On Twitter, I tend to employ qualifiers. They might be in a communication-related field or industry I am working in. They might reside in my city. They might have already engaged me on another social network or on Twitter. They might have started following me and I found their thread interesting enough to read.

On Facebook, I tend to have a closed-door policy. I generally only friend people I know or have engaged on other social networks or on my blog. However, had I friended 5,000 people, I doubt I’d be unfriending them all now, simply because they decided to invest some time with me.

Of course, there may be other tools soon enough. Some people are developing applications so you can follow an abbreviated list beyond your public networks with nobody the wiser. Huh.