To describe my relationship status with social media, allow me to borrow a Facebook term: “It’s complicated.”

What once was a nifty novelty introduced to me during my final year of college became a chore of sifting through too much information of little or no value to me. Finding the important news from my friends became a headache, and almost four years after opening my personal account, I shut it down.

Is Facebook getting too big for its britches, or am I too easily overwhelmed?

Recently, I was delighted to find some of my favorite chains —Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s — testing the Twitter waters, where I’ve also begun dipping my feet. But still, I wonder if retailers that are jumping on the social media cyberwagon eventually will begin thinking what I’ve been thinking.

Don’t get me wrong — I find it great that Twitter offers retailers the chance to listen to what their consumers have to say. Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets has responded with some of its own dynamite products — a family meal line, for example — that answer consumer demands being communicated via social media. But allow me to steal a line from the economists out there:

How long will it be until we hit the bottom? That is, how long will it be until these retailers’ Twitter pages are flooded with tweets, and it’s almost impossible to separate widely felt input from minor rants and raves? At press time, Whole Foods had a huge set of followers — totaling more than 575,000. Trader Joe’s had nearly 8,000 followers, and Fresh & Easy had nearly 3,000 followers. And I think as those numbers rise, it will get harder and harder for retailers to know when a complaint is worth a listen. Some brands out there already have experienced turbulence from tweets.

A recent article in Advertising Age pointed to a fiasco last fall, in which an ad from Johnson & Johnson — recommending Motrin to moms with aches from “wearing” their babies (in fashionable slings) — came under fire. A small group of baby-wearing moms tweeted complaints about the ad because it featured the voiceover of a mom saying, “Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion.” These tweeting moms were appalled that an ad would call babies a fashion accessory.

Johnson & Johnson quickly — perhaps too quickly — removed the ad and issued an apology. But how many mothers did they really offend? A survey from Princeton, N.J-headquartered Lightspeed Research found that almost 90 percent of women hadn’t seen the ad, Advertising Age reported. Once women did see the video, only 15 percent said they didn’t like it! Did Johnson & Johnson take the time to find out if this negativity was widely felt among its consumer base?

Retailers looking to bring their banner and brands to Twitter — or any other social media site, for that matter — need to go in knowing how to determine which issues really matter to their consumer base, and which ones might not be as big of a deal. As it is said: It’s better to do it right the first time or not do it at all.