OK, I’m an antique. I’ve got a Facebook account, but I still haven’t figured out why, other than as another phone book for contacts with people that I want to contact. I was told by Burton Lee that I had to have an account to be in the 21st century but (again) he never quite explained why.
I can understand that it’s sort of a way to blog and have your own on-line community if you don’t have a real…you know…blog. And because I do have a real blog, and one fairly highly rated on Technorati, among other places, I don’t have time to build Facebook pages.
Anyway. What is the protocol for having Facebook Friends? What is a Facebook “Friend”? Because I get a lot of requests from people I haven’t met, and have never heard of, and don’t even have friends in common with, to become their Facebook Friends. I have several pending “friends” both with and without mutual Facebook Friends, and I just don’t know what to do with them.
I may be old fashioned, but in my day, the word “friend” meant something. Has it lost that meaning?
[Update a few minutes later]
You know, if someone of whom I had no previous knowledge requested to be my Facebook “Friend” with an explanation of who they were, and why, I’d be more inclined to at least consider it, but when it’s just a response from a click on a button that says, “Become a friend,” I’m not very inclined to say, “Great!” “More Facebook Friends.”
Is collecting FFs some kind of weird status symbol?
Keep with the old meaning of “friend,” and it works just fine. Any “friends” that I don’t know, or wouldn’t otherwise invite into my real house, I ignore with impunity. It was one of the annoyances of initially starting a facebook account. The only thing useful I’ve found is being able to view my kid’s facebook pages. Let’s me see the grandkids and also keep tabs on my daughter at college. It’s amazing the things I “hear” that I otherwise would not.
I’m sure others are more Facebook savvy than me, but that’s my two cents worth.
I only add “friends” based on the traditional intent of the word. As Steve said, if I wouldn’t invite the person over, or don’t otherwise know them, I just ignore the request. I think my wife has a much more lenient view on Facebook friends (will add “friends of friends” sometimes) but I keep my list fairly small. I’m not a big time Facebook user, but to me I see nothing wrong with only accepting friend requests that you feel are people with whom you have a true friendship.
Wife has become hooked on Facebook, and made the mistake of showing her list of ‘friends’ to me. Of course, they all have friends who want to be friends, etc. so it has the appearance of a pyramid scheme.
In my admittedly anti-social opinion, it’s a new way to sell web advertising interspersed with drivel from people who need lots of attention. But perhaps I’m being too harse.
Like most tools, in the right hands it could prove to be useful for professional networking, etc. More likely it end up being abused to share cute pictures of kittens…
I’m not a big time Facebook user, but to me I see nothing wrong with only accepting friend requests that you feel are people with whom you have a true friendship.
Emphasis mine. My question is to “big time Facebook users,” to see if there’s something I’m missing here.
Do you want me to start a facebook fan page for Transterrestrial Musing Rand? LOL!
Mabey I could start on for Vendicar Decarian uber-usenet and internet-hemmoroid while I am at it! LOL!!
One great thing about Facebook is you can message someone whithout having to add them as a friend.
Too may friends and your page will become a morass of Mafia Wars posts
Like most tools, in the right hands it could prove to be useful for professional networking, etc.
That’s what Linked-In is for, I thought. My question remains unanswered.
That is one thing I noticed when i created a Twitter page. I noticed quickly that it wasn’t so much about caring what people really thought or said on there twitter. Instead it is just a contest to see who can get the biggest number under the Friends column. It’s basically high school all over again.
A friend that uses his Facebook a lot said he just uses it to get laid. He just sits there and sends about 50 messages a night with nothing but a smiley face and he says he gets about 10-20% to respond back. Of those you occasionally get a hook up. One just has to be prepared to do a tremendous amount of inane online chatting to get to that point though. “…..Can you believe they said that?…LOL…..What?….I don’t understand…K bye…..bye?”
For others I believe it is a way to find all the people you went to school with — see above. Or, to touch base with people you worked with in the past. Or, you can use it to keep tabs on your filthy filthy whore of an ex-wife. You can see which guy she is hanging onto this week, punch the screen, and clean your keyboard with drunken tears.
Can’t say about friends, I’m too busy hooking up … and if you believe that, I have an exciting real-estate opportunity for you.
Somewhat more seriously, my rule for friending people is that I must have done at least one of the following: 1) met them face-to-face; 2) had friendly correspondence with them; 3) share several other friends with them if I can’t quite remember who they are; or just possibly 4) know of them by reputation. I have broken this rule a few times, but probably all but 5 (at most) of my 240 (current) Facebook friends meet at least one of the above criteria.
In the real world, the main effect of Facebook has been to put me back in touch with a huge number of my high-school classmates, which is hilarious given that I ignored them while actually in high school. Since I now live in my old school district, I regularly communicate with, or meet, fellow graduates. Possibly the last thing I ever thought I’d end up doing.
Ah the power of google.
The Facebook Commandments
How to deal with unwanted friend requests, the ethics of de-friending, and other social networking etiquette predicaments.
You may find this treasure trove of protocols at: “www.slate.com/id/2174439”
Frankly, I still don’t “get it.” Web 2.0 continues to elude me.
I have approved more friend requests than I probably should have, but have around 90 facebook friends. They fall into a few different groups: relatives, college friends, high school/elementary school friends, and current friends and acquaintances from work. I’ve approved two or three requests from people who I don’t know but who are active in my local community. (One of those is a school board member with more than 2000 friends.)
When it comes to the college and other school friends, I’m using the word “friends” rather loosely. I had fallen out of touch with most of them, and now that I see them on facebook, I can remember why. So I got facebook not to make them show up in my newsfeed–that way I don’t have to think about them most of the time. On the other hand, I’ve also reconnected with a few people who it turns out I have more in common with than I would have guessed.
My advice would be to stick to people you know, but also be open to the possibility that some of the people from your distant past might be worth reconnecting with–even though many of them won’t be worth the trouble.
Somewhat more seriously, my rule for friending people is that I must have done at least one of the following: 1) met them face-to-face; 2) had friendly correspondence with them; 3) share several other friends with them if I can’t quite remember who they are; or just possibly 4) know of them by reputation. I have broken this rule a few times, but probably all but 5 (at most) of my 240 (current) Facebook friends meet at least one of the above criteria.
OK, I have a problem with Rule 3. Why would this be sufficient? It implies a level of trust with your other FFs that would imply something not necessarily justified.
Also, by “friending people,” do you mean asking for, or accepting invitations? The latter would obviously have a much higher bar than the former.
“Is collecting FFs some kind of weird status symbol?”
Apparently.
I got a Facebook account only because (1) signing up for it gave me a financial advantage for something else and (2) I found out you don’t have to fill out anything but your name. No where I live, no birthday, nothing that I think isn’t the business of a bunch of total strangers on the other side of the world.
What’s interesting/scary (in a watching-a-car-wreck sort of way) is what people write on their pages. Before I figured out what to uncheck before I accepted a friend, I got signed up for their feeds and was informed – for example – that someone had taken her kids for ice cream. You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. (You can cut that off, by the way.)
I don’t mind having some Facebook friends, since it’s a good way to occasionally keep up with people I like but don’t have enough in common with to e-mail regularly. Most of my actual friends I keep up with the normal way – phone, e-mail, face-to-face, or – in some cases – through blogs. I’ve also rejected requests to be friends from people I don’t remember but figure I must have known sometime because they’re friends with someone I do know.
I never go on the page unless I get an e-mail telling me someone wrote on my page, asked to be a friend, etc. (I also have a land phone line as well as a seldom-used cell phone.) So I guess I’m not in the 21st Century, and I’m fine with that.
Rand,
As I teach in my New Media Marketing course Facebook, like MySpace and the old Geocities, is basically about competition to see who have the most friends (followers). Its a ego boosting activity promoted via viral marketing to enhance the ability of marketers to collect information for data mining. People love to bore others with their vacation pictures and stories and Facebook is an organized way to do so that is easier then blogging.
BTW I have a page because my wife is into it but I only link to family members. I am also very careful what I put on it because it will be data mined. Put down that you hobby is bird watching and surprise, you will start getting email/direct mail on bird watching.
Rand,
Someone who sends you a friend request can attach a message describing who they are.
I don’t use my real name on Facebook mainly due to the fact my recent job change includes putting a certain select type of people in jail and doing a certain type of criminal investigations so I am deliberately obtuse about that for reasons I am not going to go into on an open forum.
….I amy not even use my real name on here….or do….or not!!!
As a voice of the Facebook generation, I’d say it really depends on what you goal is of your page. There are two types of Facebook pages; all of us regular people keeping in touch with our friends, and those of famous people, political figures and other people that get public attention.
So if you just want the former, don’t add random people. If you’re goal is to have a Facebook presence of Transterrestrial, add all who ask.
You can always just set up a Transterrestrial fan page. Hell, I could do if for you if you like.
Am I the only person left on the internet without a Facebook account? Go me.
And in other news, Jim (no not that one) said:
Uh oh. Maybe you’d better read this entry from Roissy in DC before it’s too late.
FACEbook? I don’t want my face turned into a book. Isn’t that against the Geneva conventions?
My wife and I joined some months back because it turned out to be the most effective way of keeping up with our (adult) children (who all live in different states from us). Since then, we’ve each connected with quite a few friends. I get occasional ‘friend’ requests from people I don’t know or remembers — when that happens, I send them a Facebook e-mail saying, “I don’t remember you — where do I know you from?” If they jog my memory or establish a connection, I add them; otherwise, I ignore them. In a few cases, I’ve dropped such ‘friends’ because I grew tired of following their posts. ..bruce..
It’s a slippery slope, that FB thing.
I started out trying to be conscientious of who I allowed to be a “friend”. I took that meaning literally, at least initially. But as I went along I allowed people who were really only colleagues on a project or two. Then I allowed people I did indeed know from high school but weren’t really friends then, and with whom I still don’t have anything in common. Then there were people I once considered professional enemies but decided it was better in a networking sense to include them as “friends” because, given the nature of my work, old enemies often turn into business partners at a later date. At that point I stopped caring and anyone could be my “friend”. So now I have many, many friends, most of whom I have no contact with or interest in outside of FB.
But it’s an interesting application insofar as you can run into someone you only know tangentially in a professional (or even private) sense, and suddenly have an interesting social conversation based on what you read on FB. “Hey, congrats on the birth of your daughter”, “How’s that GTO restoration going”, or whatever. LinkedIn (which I’ve been on for years too) doesn’t really service that.
The whole FB thing seems like an interesting experiment, and the potential for it hasn’t been quite resolved. I would recommend trying it out anyway — what’s the harm.
And if you want a crazed liberal “friend” to add, lemme know 🙂
“He who dies with the most Friends, wins?”
With one or two exceptions, everyone on my list is someone I already know, or at least have met once. Not that I don’t like an ego boost either, but getting the largest possible friends list just isn’t my idea of one…
Also, those on Facebook are mostly my contemporaries. I have a MySpace page I hardly check out (with a friends list countable on one hand, and partly overlapping with Facebook) because I’m not really looking to encounter the one-third-my-age crowd more likely to be found there, as well as personal pages configured to cause instant blindness when viewed…)
Twitter? I set up an account and have yet to come back at all.
Hey Rand,
I’m a big Facebook user. I use if for my “real friends” in the traditional sense of the term. Family, school friends, colleagues I was genuinely friendly with at former jobs; anyone I am genuinely interested in but I don’t get to see often. I use Fb to arrange meet-ups for buddies from law school or check out vacation pictures from my cousins. That sort of thing. When my son is born (any day now!) I will be posting the pictures to Fb for my friends and family to check out.
I do not approve Friend requests from complete strangers. I have a blog and Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, so it’s not hard to get in touch with me on a less “friendly” basis. I have no interest in “winning” any contest on friend quantity. Just call me a “quality” guy.
Also note that you can assign your friends to groups and then filter who can see what. You could make groups like “family”, “close friends”, “Flint, MI alums”, “acquaintances” etc. and then use the privacy controls to say which groups can see what. You can (and should!) also limit what non-friends can see. In my case friends can see my profile, friends-of-friends can see basic info, and non-friends should only be able to see my name and profile picture. I would go through every privacy setting and choice Fb has and make sure you are comfortable with each checkbox.
I will also mention, as others have, that you could create a TTM group on Fb if you wanted to for some reason which would be separate from your personal Fb page. An author I know has done this.
Feel free to email if you have any specific questions.
-Brock
“Is collecting FFs some kind of weird status symbol?”
It is for people who care. People use facebook differently. Some keep all data private and have no more than a few dozen close family and friends.
I think your Friend/Follower counts closely match your Myers/Briggs personality types. I’m an ENTP so I’ll friend just about anyone. As of this morning I have 566 friends on FB but I only follow about 293 people on Twitter. FB usage trends more toward “acquaintances” than true “friends”. But I rarely ever look at my friend count and frankly don’t care what it is. I just like being in contact with interesting people.
I’m not constantly looking at my status feed of what others are doing either. So I have 566 friends but am not constantly checking in on what they are doing so its easily managable. I have some friends that seem to do that because they comment almost immediately on whatever I say. Their work productivity must suck.
One of the reasons I have so many FB friends is that I have several social networks that don’t overlap at all. Family is wholly separate from my past Internet engineering life which is separate from my space life. A surprising number of family members are on Facebook. That number usually goes up after a funeral since that’s the only time we see each other anymore.
Use Facebook whichever way works for you. Its a tool. Some think its a lifestyle.
To Rand: I didn’t finish my last entry very well. My employer tried a Facebook-like networking tool last year, then canned when it strayed away from its original purpose.
So, back to my tool analogy, Facebook could be useful, but I;m afraid that now the monkeys are in charge of the chain saws and all it lost.
To Andrea: this outcome would not surprise me, and would be welcome, quite frankly.
3) share several other friends with them if I can’t quite remember who they are
[snip]
OK, I have a problem with Rule 3. Why would this be sufficient? It implies a level of trust with your other FFs that would imply something not necessarily justified.
Also, by “friending people,” do you mean asking for, or accepting invitations? The latter would obviously have a much higher bar than the former.
I’ve found Rule 3 to manage risk adequately, so far. If I have (say) 5 friends in common with someone, they are overwhelmingly likely to be personally acquainted with those people and to either know of me by reputation or simply recall me more easily than I recall them.
In this context, by “friending people” I mean accepting invitations.
Another datapoint for people who actually are collecting facebook friends is that there is actually an upper limit of facebook friends, and that number is 5,000.
I was considering creating a bumper sticker that says exactly what Frank Glover Says: August 20th, 2009 at 11:28 pm with a slight change: “He who dies with the most FB Friends, Wins!” Knowing the outer limit is 5K has diminished my excitement over the $$ I could make with this BS (bumper sticker…or not). Can I get a witness?