A paradox in social media
Technology isn’t my first love, but I can see its uses in many of the social media going on today. I have accounts with facebook, linkedin, myspace and so on but each of them, to my mind, carries a function. They share separate parts of me with different people.
LinkedIn enables me to share my professional history and achievements with past colleagues and associates, and enables me to help people connect with others that may be of use to them in a professional sense. I consider it a valuable professional resource.
My Blogs and Myspace accounts are places for my thoughts and creative outlets. They aren’t exactly a medium where I interact with my friends, although I often do but often allow me to share my thoughts with an online world that has often provided me with inspiration, whether it be in a creative, spiritual, emotional or physical sense. I am often careful what I say on my blogs as I am fully aware of the implications of leaking intimate details of my private life all over the web.
Facebook is for me a fun medium where I can connect with my real-life friends and interact with those I don’t get to see enough of. But it is for FRIENDS. It is not a professional network for me, and I am intensely careful who I add as a friend on Facebook. My privacy settings are very high and as a general rule, I find other people rather than them finding me.
I don’t add people I met fleetingly once several years ago, or people who want to know me as a friend of a friend. I regularly skim through my facebook friends and trim out the people I don’t consider friends, which is why it astonishes me when someone I have clearly not added as a friend or have previously removed tries to friend request me again. Perhaps they think it might have been a technical error, or perhaps that I don’t remember them and that bombarding me with friend requests will remind me of all the reasons why I really want to have them as a friend in my life. Maybe they realise that my answer to their request was DENIED and just think I’m wrong.
Whatever your reasoning, just stop and think before you hit the button. Once you do, there may be no going back.
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I’m always really surprised by the requests I get on Facebook. Most of them are from people I don’t know from Adam, and who don’t bother to enlighten me as to why they wan to be my friend. I know that a lot of them are people who read one of my blogs, but they don’t even say that, they just send a request and expect to be accepted. Just today, and I swear I’m not making this up, I received a friend request from a former colleague’s DOG. Seriously.
Of course, my problem is that when I first opened my account I just accepted every friend request I got, because I am stupid and I thought that was what you were supposed to do. So now I have ex-colleagues, ex-boyfriends, people I don’t know, and now dogs on there. Luckily, all of the quizzes and Mafia Wars stuff has made Facebook completely useless to me, so I hardly ever look at it now anyway
Hey Amber – thanks for commenting!
I have to admit to having a regular cull on Facebook. At least every couple of months because somehow people just seem to creep in when I’m not paying attention and then all of a sudden I realise that they’re someone’s estranged cousin who lives in the Himalayas that I met once at a wedding 3 years ago.
You got a friend request from a dog? I got a friend request from a brick! Makes you wonder about folk, doesn’t it?
I really should do a cull – I just can’t bring myself to remove people, though, I’m always too worried about offending them. In fact, I’ve only ever un-friended two people – a husband and wife who were in the habit of making snarky comments on my status updates: not having that!
I can’t beat a request from a brick, though – I think I’d have to accept that just to see what the brick would get up to!