Dear PropellerHeads: I've "friended" so many people on Facebook that it is now cluttered with people I barely know. How can I clean this up?

A: You mean you're not interested in the pictures from your cousin's roommate's nephew's volleyball coach's daughter's piano recital? It's funny how the drive to increase your "friend" count when you first signed up can make Facebook unusable today.

There are solutions within Facebook itself. You can click on the arrow to the right of any status update and "unsubscribe" from certain users, or you can mouse over a picture in the news feed, hover over the "Friends" button, and "Unfriend" someone. You might use groups (facebook.com/groups) to organize your friends.

But the real problem is that Facebook focuses on making connections with people, not restricting or organizing those connections. Google Plus (plus.google.com) tries to solve this by introducing "circles" - you can share an update or photo with one circle of people (like co-workers) but not with another (like family members).

Depending on what you share with others, how you share it and who those others are, you might consider a different social networking tool altogether. There is a trend now toward specialized sites and apps that address specific types of relationships.

Path (path.com) lets you "connect [...] and share [...] with your closest friends and family." Path limits the number of people you connect with to 150, based on research from Oxford University anthropologist Robin Dunbar, which shows that number to be roughly how many meaningful relationships the brain can juggle at a time.

Path lets you share photos and videos, your location, who you're with, how you're feeling, and comments and notes. There are no privacy settings since the group is small - anything you post is available for all your Path friends to see, but hidden from the Internet at large (which is not always the case with Facebook, much to the embarrassment of many). You can share any particular post outside Path (on Facebook or Twitter), but all posts are private by default.

The catch is that Path is an app for iPhones and Android phones, not a website, so there is no way to access it from a computer. They are rumored to be working on a site, but have not published any release date.

Another specialized site is FamilyLeaf (familyleaf.com), designed for families to share contact information, photos and updates. One person creates a family page, and then invites other family members to join, where they can write on a family-wide bulletin board. Photos can be shared from other sites (Facebook, Flickr, Picasa), uploaded from a computer or sent to the family photo album via email attachment. So as long as granny can send an email, she can share a picture. FamilyLeaf is a website (not a phone app).

Lastly, there is Pair (trypair.com), a "network" for just you and your spouse or significant other. Like Path, Pair is only for iPhone and Android phones, but since the idea behind it is to help two people stay connected while they're on the go, this isn't much of a limitation.

In addition to the usual stuff (sharing text messages, photos, videos, location), Pair lets you two lovebirds create a "Live Sketch," where you draw on each other's phone screens at the same time. Long distance tic-tac-toe, anyone? There's also a shared to-do list feature and "thumb kissing" - Pair shows you where your partner's thumb is on the screen, and when your thumb meets theirs, both phones vibrate. Awww, it's like Casablanca for the digital age.

Give these services a try and let us know what you think. But don't blame us if you miss those videos of your plumber's aunt's accountant's niece's softball game.

When the PropellerHeads at Data Directions aren't busy with their IT projects, they love to answer questions on business or consumer technology. Email them to questions@askthepropellerheads.com or contact us at Data Directions Inc., 8510 Bell Creek Road, Mechanicsville, VA 23116. Visit our website at www.askthepropellerheads.com.