Facebook Friending Etiquette 101
Published by Rodney Rumford September 27th, 2007 in Facebook, facebook Business.
So how many friends do you have on facebook and who really cares? Facebook is all about having a friend network of people that you know in the real world primarily.
But it can also help you to make connections with people where you share a common interest or mutual friend. It can also be great for business, and is more effective for me by a multitude of many when compared to Linked In.
My personal and business lives overlap quite a bit. So for me, having everything visible to my friends on facebook is really not an issue. This might not be the case always. You might not want to friend your boss.
My 19 year old college student niece will not friend me… I don’t blame her a bit. She does not want me to see here college life. I totally understand that. (Note to the older generation/parents, let your kids be kids and not invade their world too deeply. Thank god this was not around when I was in college)
Remember that you always have the option of only showing people your limited profile.
Facebook Friending Etiquette 101: 7 tips to follow
* Never solicit a friend that you do not know in the real world without writing a personal note.
* Be selective about who you let into your friends network. It effects the quality of your News Feed Content and what people can see about you.
* Try to make a note about how you know these friends. This will help you when your network grows.
*Don’t be obnoxious and try to get thousands of friends as the sole goal (No offense to Robert Scoble… a real world friend. He is not obnoxious; but has hit the limit of 5000 friends due to his great popularity online in the blogosphere. He is the exception to the rule.)
* On My Space it is some weird badge of achievement to have the most friends. That is not the case on facebook.
* If you are a single guy and a cute gal sends you a friend request and you do not know her but want to… say yes. 
* You are somewhat judged by your friend network on facebook. As my late father always told me: “Son, you are judged by the company you keep. Choose your friends wisely; don’t let them choose you”. Great advice dad!
I have one simple rule that filters out friend requests really quickly. It is called: I Am Too Busy To Be Your True Friend Rule. If someone does not write a personal note and I am not a close friend of theirs, I will not add them to my friend network. Why? Because if they do not care enough to write me 1 or 2 sentences; how close of friends are we really? It makes my life easy. The major exception to this rule is if someone of importance (Bill Gates or the like) or someone I want to connect with reaches out first.
It is worthy to note that I have only had to de-friend less than 1% of my facebook friends while following the above mentioned guidelines. It is easier to not let people into the party as opposed to having to kick them out later.
I am not a “Facebook Friend Collector”. I am not going to publish my facebook friend network size… but if you are my friend you know what it is. As the publisher of a blog; I find it very rewarding and humbling that people reach out and tell me what they think of this Facebook blog and ask to be my friend.
Here are some great examples of people that want to be my friend. Notice how they behave and what they say.
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Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook friends, facebook friending etiquette, friend collector
Rodney-
Great article. It’s nice to see a back-to-basics/etiquette post! I totally agree with your points here, but was wondering why you knocked LinkedIn a little bit. Is this because you find Facebook’s social graph more capable of tracking/reporting relevant details about your connections? Just curious…
I’m loving FaceReviews–been a reader since meeting you at Fb Developers Garage SD–and especially dig the new bus dev video interviews. Keep up the great work!
-Ryan
Great piece. With so many people new to FB, this is very much needed and I will post links and refer to it often.
I’ve not had to unfriend yet, but just yesterday received two invites with no photo, no message, no friends and no contact info. The country on one was Romania so I immediatly thought “scam”
Don’t know how someone could do a scam like this.. maybe just someone that hasn’t read your post here.
Warren
Hi Rodney, we have a friend in common - Tinu Abayomi-Paul
I’ve met you via your FaceReviews.com and through your other products before, and also via Facebook - but not yet in person. And I’ve also added your FB app to my profile - thanks for what you do!
In addition, thanks for publishing this entry, as I believe that its a benefit to return to basic “How To Win Friends and Influence People” or “Networking 101″ - as web folks sometimes forget we still operate in the ‘real world’ using ‘real world’ etiquette and manners
Funny I didn’t come across this entry of yours, and it was this exact topic that I podcasted over at my blog (www.ShermanLive.com) as it became such a pet peeve and time-waster that I had to say something about it - to vent, plus to educate my subscribers how to operate in Facebook or whatever social media environment.
Rodney, thanks once again for all you do, and leading the ‘bleeding edge’ trail! Appreciate ya! Cheers!