Monday, December 1, 2008

What is a facebook friend anyway?

So I have been using linkedin for professional relationships and facebook for personal ones and I am very comfortable with that. But I have recently been bombarded by friend requests from people with whom I have no interest in re-connecting with or personally connecting with. Maybe I'm kind of whacked (well, I actually already know that I am whacked, but that is more like a chapter in a book than a blog post), but I do not want to have the entire world as "facebook friends". In fact, I almost long to have some new sections:
  • facebook enemies - for people who have invited me and I want to ignore with extreme predjudice
  • facebook acquaintances - for people who I might meet once or twice but they are not really friends yet
  • facebook co-workers - for people with whom I have a professional relationship with but am not really comfortable with them having full access to my profile
What's more unusual to me is that I am not a private guy. I really don't care who knows what about my status and infomation. I just don't like calling them "friends". Am I so crazy in that I don't like the label "friends" for people whom I am not "friends" with? Doesn't this devalue the people whom I am friends with? Does the facebook modifier actually have an effect on the meaning of the term? Facebook is still too new for me to know.

Rating:

Facebook - Like it. It really has set a new standard in terms of a killer RIA.

People who want to be "friends" with everybody - Garbage

4 comments:

furiousBall said...

i'm going to poke you

Kari said...

Ive had several real life friends say this exact thing!

Glad to see you blogging again! (Barbie says she misses you!)

Anonymous said...

MySpace has this problem licked. It allows you to group your "friends" into categories - so you can create an "F U" category and let em know what you really think.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I do have a moment of thought when a person who was a year behind me in H.S. and I talked to all of a dozen times is friending me.. there is something nice about the initial "hey, things turned out okay for them" read when you see their profile, but a friendship is an ongoing thing, and many Facebook friends are going to sit in the inactive category from Minute 2 onward..