facebook

[Anonymous]

I recently joined and reconnected with some old college friends, which has been great. Some old high school friends, etc have "friended" me... people I haven't spoken to in years and years who I wasn't necessarily close with even all those years ago. What is the expectation of me? Is it rude if just accept their "friendship" but don't correspond with them beyond that? I know I'm being ridiculous worrying about this but I just don't have the energy to regularly correspond with all of these people but I don't want to be rude.

[Anonymous]

I accept these requests but I don't message them unless they message me. If they do, I am brief as to not encourage more responses. Some people get crazy trying to add as many friends as possible. I would only talk with the people you want to keep in touch with.

[Anonymous]

I also joined a few months ago and some high school classmates friended me. But we don't really correspond with each other. We're just on each other's friends list.

Go ahead and accept their "friendship" but don't feel guilty about not corresponding with them.

[Anonymous]

I've had these requests, too, from people who are more acquaintances than friends. In a couple of cases, I have approved the friend requests but limited their access to certain elements of my profile. Here's how you do it, according to the Facebook Help section:

"Controlling the visibility of content on an individual basis is easy on Facebook. First, go to the Profile section of the Privacy page. Second, click the drop-down next to the setting that controls the content you want to restrict and select "Customize." You will then see a pop-up that contains the section "Except These People." Type the name of the friend into the box and click enter. The friend will now be unable to view the content in question.

When you are creating content, you can also set the privacy settings for the specific piece of content. For example, if you are uploading a new photo album, you can control the privacy settings for the album on the first step of the album creation process."

[Anonymous]

The odd thing I find is that sometimes I have more interaction on Facebook with people I barely knew and the people I was actually friends with don't give a crap to interact. So, some guy I went to Elementary School with sends me an E-Mail and asks how things are going and a girl I spent an entire summer nearly every day with in High School is like 'what's up?, your kid is cute' and that's about it even when all I asked her was how she likes living in a new city she ignored it. I also find on these sites that people who were generally "popular" are still seen that way and everyone from HS instantly "friend"s them. I personally don't friend people I didn't know at all, but I accept requests from people who do provided I have any clue who they are.....but I don't message them to say anything. I like how sometimes a person pops up who I hadn't even thought about in years!

[Anonymous]

I don't have any college friends on Facebook. It is as if they have all had a meeting and decided not to use it. I do however have several old high school friends on there, and some friends from babycenter, as well as cousins. I was actually amazed how many of my old highschool friends made it out of our little podunk town, and live in this area. I would never have known if it wasn't for facebook.

[Anonymous]

Facebook is a social networking site. If you don't have the time to be social, why are you there?

It annoys me no end when I find an old friend, become "friends" on facebook, and don't even get a response to my "catching up" message. Yeah, it's nice to know they're still alive, but I want to be social, know what's happening in their lives, etc. I'm not looking to inflate my numbers (I probably only have 25-30 friends on the site). I see lots of people I know/knew, but I only send a friend request if they are/were, you know, FRIENDS.

If you don't have time to correspond, or aren't interested, ignore the request. Simple as that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I accept these requests but I don't message them unless they message me. If they do, I am brief as to not encourage more responses. Some people get crazy trying to add as many friends as possible. I would only talk with the people you want to keep in touch with.

Like this... why would you even accept the request if you try not to encourage communication? What is the point in having these people as "friends" if you're actively ducking them??? It has to be the pursuit of a higher number, which is just so juvenile.

[Organicmania]

Look, all these tools are so new that there really are "no rules of the road" or "etiquette." It's not like anyone's Mother raised them and said, "Now, don't accept a Friend request on Facebook unless..." (OMG, will we be the first Moms who have to do this?)

I think the main thing is not to READ INTO other people's reactions. As you can see from this thread, there are no rules. Some people think it's rude not to accept a friend invite. Some think it's rude not to respond, catch up, connect...Others just want to know where people are, so they connect.

Everyone is busy and everyone sees these tools from their own unique vantage points.

Chill. If someone bothers you, tell them. "Hey, I friended you cuz we were good friends in school. I'd like to catch up. Do you have some free time when we could talk or chat online or just exchange emails?"

Maybe they'll say no. They just had a baby. Have a busy job. Have a child with a disability. Got laid off and are depressed. Who knows? Point is, there are no rules for Facebook. Don't take things personally.

And if you want to Friend me, I'm on Facebook!

[Anonymous]

OP here... thanks for the input. It's ironic... after posting this I found someone who had been a really good friend in high school and "friended" him with a little comment and he confirmed friendship but never wrote back or commented on my page. I actually felt a bit hurt. I guess I'm actually one of those people who takes everything personally which is why I wanted to know the proper etiquette so I wouldn't hurt anyone else's feelings. I was thrilled to reconnect with very dear college friend, that in itself makes the whole thing worth it.

[Anonymous]

I have really enjoyed reconnecting with people over Facebook. I think it's totally up to you and how close you were to each person as to how much you choose to communicate. I have had several people friend me with no follow-up messaging, and that's fine -- I have also friended people with no separate message, either because it's someone I've seen fairly recently and I know what's going on with them or because I intend to message them later, after they accept my friend request and I can access their profile and actually reference what they are doing these days. I always write back to a message, but I don't get my feelings hurt if the friend request is all that there is -- sometimes for an old friend or an acquaintance, it feels like you are catching up just by reading the person's profile. Just enjoy it and do whatever feels natural.

[Anonymous]

I use Facebook to post pics of my kids so I really limit the number of friends on my site. Also, for people I barely knew from college and HS, I usually only give them limited access.

[Anonymous]

Is there a way for people to see that you've searched them? I suddently got nervous about that because I looked up a few exes