Comments on: Facebook etiquette question

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:54:26 +0000

I find it shocking that almost a year on since this blog post was made, and Facebook still hasn’t evolved to the point that I can add people who are within my ‘blogashpere’, and people I know personally, yet keep them (to a degree) seperate. I know that there are options to only show a limited profile, however, I feel this still doesn’t make it the ‘ultimate social network.’
To remedy this, I only add people I know well to my account, and if anyone else adds me, I tell them straight - Sorry, but my facebook is quite personal to me. If you want to keep in regular contact with me, then feel free to message me on it [facebook] or subscribe to my Twitter account. This way, I’m cutting them off from my data, yet still allowing a portal to contact me with.

By: jps

jps — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 03:40:46 +0000

The other day I received a friend request from someone who knew of me from high school but was two years younger than me. They said they recognized me so I accepted. But like many of the posters here, I like to keep my friends ‘pure’ — as in people I truly consider friends. So I wrote this person a friendly email to see if there is any familiarity or connection whatsoever. I haven’t received a reply so I plan to delete them. It’s as easy as that. I gave them a chance to make it ‘real’.

By: Rodney Rumford

Rodney Rumford — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 17:11:01 +0000

Jeff,
It is largely a personal decision. It is not rude to not accept friend invitations if you do not know the person. You need to decide how you want to use facebook and what you want to have it do for you. It has some linkedin like qualities, and some friendster like qualities.

However; the DNA of facebook is not friend collecting, or music centric or anarchy like myspace. The DNA of facebook is real people sharing real interests and real information and real behavior (not personna based).

If you add a gazillion random “friends” that are people that you don’t know, you run the risk of data overload and distraction. However this network effect is actually good if you want a larger population to be aware of what you are doing via your mini-feed. There are pro’s and con’s to this approach.

Again, As a blogger you are aware that 95% of the people that read your blog do not comment; they just want to read what you publish. So if you take the same approach on facebook, more people will be aware of what you “publish”; which happens to be how you behave, what groups you join, who you befriend, what applications you add/delete… Facebook can make you VERY transparent.

The fact that you are using facebook at all suggests a fundamental shift and convergence of social media. Facebook will become much more than just “another” social networking site. It already is much more than that in my opinion.

Facebook has a huge opportunity to become very useful to many people older than 25. In fact it is already very useful in many ways and continues on a daily basis to become more useful as new application functionality arises. with 35,000+ developers building applications; very useful application will rise to the top (as will some entertaining and not inherently useful applications).

I noticed that you are already a member of a group that we started, Facebook Applications: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2548175922

We are reporting, reviewing and rating on these new facebook applications at http://www.facereviews.com

Cheers!

Rodney Rumford
Founder: Facereviews.com

By: Spud

Spud — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:22:22 +0000

I’ve been thinking of developing hundreds of personalities on Facebook and selling them to the highest bidders in the endless Facebook “arms race.”
I have honestly lost count of the number of “friends” the people around me have made it to, but the competitiveness is scary, very scary…

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 14:52:50 +0000

I dont really understand the whole thinking behind a “friends arms race”. I dont really want people I dont know looking at the pictures I post for my real friends to see. I guess my general rule is if I havent met you in some form, usually in person, then we arent going to be friends on Facebook. Feel free to poke me though.

By: Vidiocy » Just Another Geezer on Facebook

Vidiocy » Just Another Geezer on Facebook — Thu, 31 May 2007 15:45:01 +0000

[...] On Tuesday, Jeff Jarvis blogged about the issue of whether or not to accept Facebook friend requests from people he didn’t [...]

By: » Let’s Be Facebook Friends sixtysecondview: Sixty second interviews from pr, media and politics

Wed, 30 May 2007 15:55:35 +0000

[...] Jeff Jarvis just posted on the Facebook ‘let’s be friends’ phenomena. Anybody own up to similar conversations to the one below or am I the only one who blunders around like this? [...]

By: Greg0658

Greg0658 — Wed, 30 May 2007 13:06:32 +0000

If I’ve met the person in person, or by phone and no punches were thrown verbally or with hands then I say ok.

If the meeting is by blog and/or email only then it gets fuzzy. A response to comments/email = points to the good.

I agree that it the move provides some endorsement. At a point 1000 friends looks like the individual collects them like CQ cards in ham radio, which I passed on playing that.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Wed, 30 May 2007 05:45:21 +0000

I keep it to people I know… or really attractive women, who, on Facebook (unlike MySpace), tend to be actual humans.

By: bijan sabet

bijan sabet — Wed, 30 May 2007 00:40:46 +0000

I’m mostly closed. I only accept invites if I know the person or if they wrote a note in their invite email that says something like “i read your blog” or “i’m also friends with so and so

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 29 May 2007 21:25:03 +0000

I’ve used a general rule that if the person wanting to befriend me is known to one of my existing facebook friends, they get a tick whether I know them or not.

The difficulty is what to do with the people you have never heard of and are not known to your friends. It seems rude to just reject their offer, but over-familiar to accept. At the moment I have a limbo list as long as your arm. I thought I’d wait a few months until someone wrote a website with do’s and don’ts of facebook etiquette before acting.

Over to you Jeff.

By: Kate

Kate — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:05:12 +0000

I agree with the earlier comment that among the college crowd, number of friends is sometimes equated with that much coveted popularity. I only friend people I actually know as a rule, because I want to be able to use facebook openly, sharing with my friends as it is intended without worrying about who’s looking over my shoulder.
That said, the new wave of bloggers on facebook makes this rule tricky. I read this blog regularly, but don’t know you personally, Jeff. I want to be your facebook friend to show my support and be connected, but you may reasonably not want to friend me back.
The question becomes how you want to use facebook. If you want to use it on a personal level, I’d understand refusing my pending friend request. But if you want to open your profile up into a professional tool, then it makes sense to allow fans in. When friending my favorite public people (for lack of a better term, celebrity isn’t right either), I usually include a message to show that I am a real fan.

By: RyanB

RyanB — Tue, 29 May 2007 18:45:27 +0000

LOL - I guess I never gave the issue much thought.

I usually just say out loud to myself, “Who the hell are you?” Then, if the photo of the person looks remotely interesting I’ll add them as a friend and check out their profile. If the profile is stupid, I remove them as a friend immediately.

Also, it’s perfectly acceptable to send a message saying, “Hi - how do I know you? Where did we meet?”

But I think quality over quantity on Facebook. It’s more “who you know” and not “how many weirdos you have listed as friends.”

By: Greg P.

Greg P. — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:33:26 +0000

It’s a good question, Jeff. I generally allow friendships if we have something in common - school, work, or a common friend, but generally not just geography. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but I wouldn’t friend someone who I only shared a geographic location with, so I tend to use the golden rule in that case…

What is the threshold? You and I met and talked at the Norgs unconference a year or so ago and have perhaps had some e-mail conversations since, but have we reached the friends threshold? Hmmmm.

By: Fausta

Fausta — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:02:30 +0000

I wish they had a “been visiting your blog for 3 years but very rarely comment” option. I added you as a Facebook friend but that’s not one of the options.

By: Doug

Doug — Tue, 29 May 2007 16:42:00 +0000

Not really an answer, but a related observation….as Facebook expands from being a school-centric service to a true social networking platform they may want to consider adding some additional options to answer the “How do you know…” question. For instance, you (Jeff) and I ‘know’ each other from some email conversations we had a year or 2 back, but none of the available options worked for that type of connection. While “met randomly” doesn’t serve as a very effective memory jog (and you’re probably still trying to remember who I am) it was pretty much the only option available.

By: ahg

ahg — Tue, 29 May 2007 13:58:13 +0000

Within the college context there is sometimes the arms race mentality. But generally speaking because the privacy layers on facebook are built around essentially granting people access by befriending them, I think it’s good practice to only friend your actual friends.

You can send the awkward “who are you?” message, but you can also just say no. It doesn’t send a big “THEY SAID NO!” message or anything terrible like that.