The first “Dear Ken” in a new series of social networking Q&A from ordinary Meg the Mom’s and Jed to Jedi’s out there who are crossing the chasm into social media. If you have a question, we’ll filter it, pass it around the office for a laugh and try to answer it for you. Please feel free to send your questions to me at ken@socialagency.com. There are no stupid questions only stupid peoples.
Dear Ken,
I have a question regarding facebook etiquette: I’ve recently received a few “friend” solicitations from people I knew in junior high or high school — names of people I would soon rather forget than have to think about or look at their family photos (including one from a boy who was my first “boy friend” and just the thought of him makes my stomach turn with regret). Should I just ignore their “friend” requests? Will that send bad karma my way??
Any advice would be greatly appreciated,
Regards,
B
Dear B,
I share your pain, as many of us do. The good and the bad of social networking is that people, even old flames that make your stomach turn, can track you down (I’ve probably been that guy). The short answer is to hit the “Ignore” button. No message will be sent to the solicitor (sender of the friend request for the non-lawyers out there). If another request is sent, my advice is to repeat the previous step: Ignore. They should get the picture…if not, then send a firm yet cordial message through the “send a message” option on the friend invite to the solicitor stating your “social networking friend” criteria. Here’s an example:
Dear Ken,
It’s great to see you on here and I hope all is well. I have received your friend requests but unfortunately due to personal and professional obligations, I limit my contacts. Thank you for understanding – FREAK!
Regards,
B
I would drop the “FREAK” part when you hit send. To recap, here’s some simple advice:
(1) Decide your friend criteria
Are you a Facebook ho? And accept all friend requests. Or do you want to set up a friend criteria. Sooner or later you will have to choose the latter. I had a great conversation from a “mom” perspective with my wife and her cousin about this. Cousin Madge put it in simple terms, “I befriend them on Facebook if I feel comfortable enough with showing my kids’ pics to them.”
(2) Get familiar with the privacy settings
On Facebook, go to your Profile > Settings (on the top menu) > Privacy settings. This is key. You can control who is allowed to see what is on your profile, who can search for you, and how you can be contacted, and control what stories about you get published to your profile and to your friends’ News Feeds. You can release the H-bomb of social networking, block an individual from all communications. If there is no privacy settings for you, I suggest you not use that social network.
(3) Categorize your friends
Even with a friend criteria, you should attempt to categorize your friends – “High school friends”, “College friends”, “Co-workers”, “My kids’ friends’ parents”, etc.. This will allow you to set different privacy functions for each group.
One more piece of information to help formulate a “deny” tactic. If you delete a friend, no message is sent to that person notifying them of the delete. The friend will lose all privileges to view your profile etc. and have to go through the “friend request” process again once they notice you are no longer on their friend list. This is a passive-aggressive approach but it works for some out there.
It’s good Karma to have a friend list with whom you want to communicate with. Good luck B.
On stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City, Facebook’s vice president of product Chris Cox announced that starting tomorrow, Facebook will be rolling out “drastically simplified” and improved privacy controls. He didn’t give any details, but did suggest that they should alleviate some of the recent privacy problems Facebook has faced.