Facebook Friends

DrunkenPorcupine

New member
What criteria do you use to add Facebook friends? I'm curious, especially after seeing so many "add me" signatures. :)
 
For me, Facebook friends come in 3 categories:

Real life friends (who have complete access)
Online friends (who I've met on various sites)
Clients (who have limited access)

My FB page is as much a marketing tool for my business and my message board as it is for my friends ... so I'm pretty careful about who I add.
 
I realized I didn't give my criteria.

I'm a political activist, so I use my political platform as a guide. If someone is in my network of friends and like-minded people, I'll add them.

Additionally, if I know someone personally (and I consider online relationships to be personal relationships) I'll add them.

There are some exceptions to these rules, but that's a new thread. :p
 
Everything that I share on my Facebook page are the kinds of things you would know about me if you met me at a party or something. My photo albums and notes are tweaked for specific people or groups of people, but there is no information on there that I wouldn't shout from the rooftops anyway, and certainly nothing "secret" that I would be worried about getting in trouble for (not that I ever do anything like that, I'm an absolute goody-two-shoes and would never even do so much as jaywalk:cool:). Also, I check my credit report for strange activity, but my credit score isn't that great in the first place so no one would get very far with it even if they did try to steal my identity.

So to answer your question - I'm pretty laid-back about adding people, but I do treat it on a case-by-case basis.
 
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I'm more picky about family and people I know than I am about total strangers. I don't care what strangers know about me but am guarded about what "actual" friends see and know. I have 483 facebook friends and less than 50 of them are actually people I know or care to know. I simply add them to fill up a sad little facebook game I play LOL! I'm not a privacy advocate or paranoid about identity theft...I've got nothing to hide on there.
 
The bulk my friends on FB are people I attended school with. Some of Curly's relatives whom I've never met are also in my group, plus my sister and sister-in-law (though my daughter is on FB, she's not on my friends list, yet her mother is). Then I have Burner peeps, Pagan peeps, drum corps peeps, and some folks left over from my first batch of friends on FB.

When I first joined, I found a group and contributed to it right away. The founder of the group was pleasantly surprised (it was a music group with few formally-trained musicians on it) by me offering up a bunch of information out of the blue. He made me an officer of the group and directed people from his network to friend me. I had a group of 70 or so friends pop up--musicians from around the world. Once I got my feet under me, I pared most of them from my friends list, though a few remain that I've had direct interaction with online.

I'm not terribly picky about adding folks to the FB friends list. I don't blog anything extremely personal there. I blog (and repost it) on other sites, so my friends lists on those sites are much smaller. On Tribe or LJ, my standards are much different for adding folks to my list, for that's where my blog appears with all sorts of juicy stuff in it--whether debuting art or reporting medical results (and how unemployment is literally killing me slowly) or how I processed the breakup with L all those months ago.

The peeps on those sites all know I'm poly and Pagan, along with hearing about the drum corps, the artwork, the other hobbies, and so on and so forth. Some of the folks on FB do, most don't. At least one has figured out Curly and I are poly from my profile, though I doubt most would bother to put two and two together.
 
I have mostly poly friends and highschool friends. Makes for interesting comments sometimes :p

I don't have much criteria, but I do a lot of privacy stuff where necessary. Sometimes I feel I am waaaayyy to out there and feel vulnerable to some people, so I block them from stuff...

haven't figured out how to get "privacy" for videos though.. still working on that. Anyone?
 
In general, I'm fairly liberal about who I friend... I have friends from elementary school, high school, college. People from my industry. Coworkers. Family... I tend to be a little more reserved about people I meet on message boards, I don't usually friend them on FB unless I've gotten to know them via IM.
 
I like facebook for the game apps. So I have added a lot of strangers just so I can have neighbors on my apps. I don't use facebook like I do myspace. I have no pictures on my facebook or anything. It's not my main social network. It's just the one with the best apps.
 
At first, I kept FB for people I have actually met face to face. Then all my high school friends started finding me. Then people who have seen my band. Now I have now idea who I've met in real life and who's and internet acquaintance. So when I get a friend request these days it mostly depends on who our mutual friends are. It's sort of like the mob. Are you a friend of mine or a friend of ours?
 
I recently split my FB accounts and created a new one for clients. It was making me uncomfortable to edit my posts in order not to offend my (sometimes) deeply religious clientele, besides, they just don't need to know my joys and sorrows.

So for my personal FB account I will friend anyone who would recognize me in public and say a friendly hello AND those online people whose posts, thoughts or lives interest me.

There are a fair number of fellow cyclists on there, too but we are definitely part of a community and during race season much useful chatter happens.
 
If u want me to add u I don't mind I just have friends, co-workers and family just message me and I'll add :)
 
I add anyone to facebook who wants to get to know ME the person - so basically anyone who wants to know any of me - not just the one facet of me that they know from the website they met me on.

Anyone who is a part of my facebook is aware that my minor children are my facebook friends (my 8 & 10 year old) and that I WILL delete anything inappropriate that they may see.
 
my teens are on mt f-list as well :). It's the only way I know what's going kon in their lives sometimes *sigh*. I have a variety of people on there from app neighbours to online friends to family, i'm not pickif anyone wants to add me feel free to PM me for the info.
 
I actually just went through my FB account and cleaned house. Basically, if you don't know me in real life, you're not on my FB friends list. Simple. I got tired of having people postinbg in spanish, french, and arabic. I don't understand any of those languages, so I deleted them first. Then I got into a depression state, and deleted everyone else that I had never met in person before.

So in order to be on my facebook, I have to know you personally and have met you in person.
 
I actually just went through my FB account and cleaned house. Basically, if you don't know me in real life, you're not on my FB friends list. Simple. I got tired of having people postinbg in spanish, french, and arabic. I don't understand any of those languages, so I deleted them first. Then I got into a depression state, and deleted everyone else that I had never met in person before.

So in order to be on my facebook, I have to know you personally and have met you in person.

haha...why not just hide them from your wall :)...:p
 
Partially because I don't know how....Partially because I figure if I don't know them in real life, then I don't/won't ever meet them since we don't really "socialize" at all. Plus, I could honestly not care if they just woke up, or if they went for a bike ride, or any number of other odd things they may choose to post about. I also have no real desire to meet people online, who I'll likely never speak to in person.
 
Partially because I don't know how....Partially because I figure if I don't know them in real life, then I don't/won't ever meet them since we don't really "socialize" at all. Plus, I could honestly not care if they just woke up, or if they went for a bike ride, or any number of other odd things they may choose to post about. I also have no real desire to meet people online, who I'll likely never speak to in person.

Well if you ever want to just hide someone, hover to right of an entry on your wall, a little "hide" should appear. Click on it and it will give you options

FANTASTIC for hiding all those stupid games everyone plays.
 
FANTASTIC for hiding all those stupid games everyone plays.

If you use Firefox, there's a filter available that will remove much of the crap from your feed. Game postings, reports that so&so added so&so to their friends list, and so on.

The filter won't guarantee never seeing all of that because FB tweaks its code regularly and the filter won't remove stuff affected by the tweaks. It is updated fairly regularly to deal with the changes, though, and makes FB much easier to deal with.

You can find it at chocolatesoftware.com.
 
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