The Facebook 3-Strike Rule
I’ve blogged about Facebook etiquette before, and have since gotten a bit lax with my denial of random would-be friends who don’t give me any reason to know who they are or why we should be connected. Well, my laziness has come back to bite me in the tush, so I’m putting a stop to it and introducing the Facebook 3-Strike Rule. With me?
Lately on my Facebook account – and I know I’m not alone – I’ve been getting tons of requests to join this cause that has nothing to do with me or my life experience, to be a fan of that brand I’ve never heard of, or to attend an event for some acoustic guitar performance in a town 500 miles away put on by some guy who knew a girl I may have taken a class with my junior year of high school… No thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Facebook enemies “friends“ who engage in this kind of Fb invite spam: cut the crap, please.
And to help with the crap cutting, here’s what I propose. If you invite me to join your page, group, game, app, quiz, etc., three times (um, clearly I rejected the first two invitations, genius, and I’m not interested), I’ll be de-friending you, plain and simple. And the thing is, we likely don’t know each other at all anyway, so I probably shouldn’t have been Facebook friends with you in the first place.
If you’re reading this, I encourage everyone to enforce the Facebook 3-Strike Rule with me. There are enough annoying things in everybody’s day, so come on, I really do not need to log into Facebook to see yet another invitation to the Oh Nuts! fan page that has no relevance to me – and if it for some reason does, I couldn’t see it because the sender gave zero context.
When it comes to Facebook, always remember:
- Be polite
- Respect people’s Facebook pages
- Do not blindly invite your friend list to be a fan of your project
- Friend-request people with whom you have a reason to connect
What do you guys think? Helpful rule?
Etiquette, Facebook, Social Networks | Comments (12)Shining a Spotlight on “Net Geners”
Tonight I read the first of a BusinessWeek eight-part series Don Tapscott is authoring about my super stimulated, very digital generation.
With tomorrow’s election as the backdrop, Don brings up some good points about how we as a generation tend to behave and think. He’s right–we multi-task like crazy and we prefer to learn through collaboration rather than lectures. And in my own experience, young people definitely have a tremendous ability and affinity for uniting in groups online, whether it’s around a common interest, political event or social community.
Musing about how my generation organizes online, I can’t help but think of my friend Jessica. In late August, one of my best childhood friends was in a horrific car crash. Within what felt like minutes, a Facebook group was created, where hundreds of Jessica’s friends joined together to receive updates on her condition, upload photos, and leave messages of strength and love. When Jess passed away a few days later, the group transformed into an active tribute, and the page filled with memories and I miss yous. This sort of digital community grieving has never existed before. And this type of organization online extends to all kinds of human interaction, from conversation, education, and celebration.
One thing I guess I find strange is the idea that this generation spans ages 11-31. I think with the way social, information and entertainment technology are evolving at the speed of light, generations might need to be separated more. Within the Net Generation, there are probably three or more sub-generations that have grown up and experience mobile and the Web differently from each other.
Let’s keep talking about Facebook. For instance, my class year in school was the first to start college with Facebook. Facebook was a huge defining part of my college experience, start to finish. Someone who is 31 has probably only used the site as a professional and most likely has a different experience with it. And then someone who is 11 technically can’t use Facebook yet, and who knows what his or her experience will be. Maybe for these kids, Facebook will be a central element to their adolescence, or maybe by that time, this site and sites like it will be too saturated with “old people” and Facebook will take on a different meaning for this age group. I understand there are differences within every traditional generation, but I think the reality today is generations are getting smaller as technology and society move faster.
In any case, I’m really looking forward to reading the forthcoming seven articles in Don’s series. Give this one a read and let’s talk about it.
Facebook, Social Media, Social Networks | Comment (1)Who Even Are You? Facebook Friend Request Etiquette
Who are you people?
Over the past couple months, I’ve been getting friend requests on my Facebook profile left and right from total strangers. You may not think you’re a total stranger if you follow me on Twitter or if we have 28 mutual friends, but I have no idea who you are. If we’ve never spoken or if there is no evidence that I know you, you’re a stranger, plain and simple.
And here’s the thing: I might want to be your friend. In fact, I probably do want to be your friend. But when you request my friendship without saying how you know me, anything about a mutual contact, why you think we should connect, etc., you just look like a sketchball. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but it’s true.
Look, it takes one minute to write a little message that attaches with a friend request. If you want to be my Facebook friend (or ANYONE’s Facebook friend–this is etiquette that should be universal) spend 60 seconds saying why. However, there’s a right and a wrong way to approach this.
Examples of appropriate messages:
- Hi Amanda, I follow you on Twitter and wanted to connect on Facebook, too.
- Hey Amanda, we met at a Tweetup in Boston. It was great meeting you in person–Facebook friendship is the next logical step, right?
- Hi, I’m Friendston McFriendinator. Small world–I work with Friendiana Friendelton and she told me you’ve been buds since you were kids. She said you’re a good person to know.
- Hi Amanda, I subscribe to Social Honeycomb and think your blog is rad. Wanna be friends?
Examples of inappropriate messages:
- hi your hot LOL
- I tried poking you but you didn’t poke me back. Can we be friends now????!?!?!!
- I’m visiting Boston next month and you looked like someone who knows how to have fun, if you know what I mean…
- Hi, you said on your blog I had to do this or you wouldn’t accept my friend request. So, yeah.
You may think I’m being facetious but people really send idiotic, vapid stuff like that^.
Or worse, nothing at all.
And I’ll be transparent: I’m guilty of not saying anything with friend requests to people I don’t personally know sometimes, too. Usually it’s with someone who’s a “twelebrity” or something totally absurd and stupid to say like that, but I’m going to make sure I take my own advice from now on in all friending situations. Please, please take my advice, too.
If you’re the type of guy person who sends blank friend requests to girls people you don’t really know, take a minute and ask, “Do I want her to think I’m a sketchball?” Hopefully the answer is “NO” and you’ll send a qualifying message with that “Add to friends” clickety click.
Facebook Chat is Here, Ridiculous
Facebook’s chat feature launched today. In my opinion, we all have PLENTY of chat and conversation options separate from Facebook and this new feature is just redundant. I already have AIM/iChat, GChat/GTalk, ooVoo, Skype, Twitter and SMS that enable me to have real-time conversations with my friends. Facebook was never about that for me. It’s a place to store and share information–including the contact information I choose to display for the conversation-enablers mentioned above. I won’t say that I’ll never use this new Facebook chat feature, but I maintain that it’s ridiculous and unnecessary.
Below is my reaction. What’s yours?
Social Media Vocab: Friend
The word “friend” is thrown around a lot in the socnet space. What is interesting to me is that the new definitions sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are creating seem to be spilling over into everyday life (yes, outside of social networks). Variations like “de-friend” “friend me!” and “friend request” aren’t just buzzwords on social sites–I hear them spoken aloud all the time. It’s strange. I mean, since when do you meet someone and formally request her friendship? It’s not like a proposal or something. Oh yeah, before you request my friendship, maybe you should ask my dad for permission first… So, so weird. In my opinion, the definition of “friend” has undeniably and permanently changed.
Tonight I deleted 90 “friends” from my Facebook network. I was at 1,097 friends. In my opinion, that’s pretty absurd. I don’t have that many friends! A lot of the people in my Facebook network are acquaintances, friends of friends, classmates, teammates, colleagues, family members, exes… MOST of those 1,000-something people aren’t even my friends in the traditional sense of the word. But the meaning of the word “friend” has changed, so if we met once at a party or worked on a project in class sophomore year and are connected on Facebook, I guess we’re friends. Weird, huh?
Earlier this evening, I asked my Twitter network to define the word friend. Below is a screen shot of the results:
These are some pretty good definitions, I think. But I’m not sure what a friend REALLY is anymore–all I know is that the word “friend” has been distorted because of social networks and it is often used in ways that do not reflect what we all grew up believing friendship to mean. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily–just different meanings for an old word.
Are we friends?
Now it’s your turn to take a stab at it. Give me your definition.
Buzzing Bees, Facebook, Social Networks, Twitter | Comments (9)Facebook Ads Love You and Your Interests
From a user’s perspective, I don’t like it. From a developer’s perspective, this is smart. Facebook has never been one to let someone else blaze a trail…
Facebook users, what do you think?
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Where Do You Draw the Line?
In my classes lately, we’ve been discussing the issue of privacy and how careful you need to be when considering your online presence. We’ve been talking about how potential employers are using Facebook and other common college social sites to get the inside scoop on what their interviewees are really like, and how dangerous this can be for students living in a world where pretty much everything you do is captured on a digital camera.
We worry and fret about what about us will be a deal-breaker in a hiring situation. Should we untag every photo of ourselves, or just the really bad ones from our 21st birthday party? Should we list only our career-oriented interests, or can we feel free to say that we enjoy things like shopping, partying and naps? Should we turn our Facebook account into a pseudo-resume, or can we use our profiles to interact with our friends online in relaxed, even silly ways?
I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. I don’t want to completely compromise my online personality out of fear that someone won’t hire me because I’m not always wearing a blazer and I happen to enjoy taking silly pictures. But at the same time, I can’t deny the real risks attached to revealing too much of one’s personal pasttimes online. (Just for the record, I think I live a fairly tame life compared to most of my peers, so maybe I’m not the best person to use as a gauge.) I go out of my way to warn my (non-savvy) peers that you know, maybe you SHOULDN’T post that picture of you puking in some bushes and maybe you SHOULDN’T say that your interests are simply “sex and food.”
The hardest part is that there are no real rules about this stuff.
What I find difficult is this: I truly don’t believe that the post-Facebook hiring managers out there never had a night (only one?) of partying with their friends in college. I also don’t believe that these hiring managers have never spent time with their friends in situations that were, let’s say, less than professional. The issue here is that students like me, who have grown up in a digital world where photos, video and sharing are commonplace, are being personally judged by people who were never in our shoes. It used to be that the interview and the resume were the deciding factors–now employers are digging for content outside of what we have chosen for you to see. I, myself am not ashamed of my Facebook profile; I just think that students and employers alike need to look at this judgment issue with a more critical eye.
Yes, we college kids capture and post footage that no one really needs to see, but maybe all the seasoned pros out there would have done the same if they had had the same technology and values driving their own college experience. It’s a different world for sure.
The point of this post is not to say that college kids should be off the hook when it comes to the content they post online, but I really think we all need to develop some guidelines for ourselves when it comes to the intersection of college, career, leisure time and social presence.
Just be glad you aren’t Stacy Hedger, OK? No matter how many drunk, sloppy photos of you there are on Facebook, it could never be as bad as this. For me, this would be a deal-breaker. If you were (or are) interviewing college kids, what would be a deal-breaker for you?
Amanda, Facebook, Social Media, Social Networks | Comments (13)