Friend and Let Friend! 11.7.07
I am sitting here at BlogWorld Expo with Chris Brogan, Liz Strauss and Chris Heuer. We’re goin’ over our “friending” policies. These guys are so cool and all great examples of my theory: Friend and Let Friend! Let me ’splain…
First off – I believe in friends. I like friends, I am a social person. Always have been (my third grade teacher said: “Stephanie is a Social Butterfly!) Online social networking is a natural fit for me. Much has been written about what is appropriate behavior on Facebook and other social networks with regards to friending. The bottom line is – this is one area of social media that YOU CONTROL.
Everyone has a right to define their own level of comfort with regard to friend lists. Do not assume that everyone operates under the same rules. And don’t assume that the rules apply equally to every social network (my Facebook “policies” are quite different than my Flickr rules).
For me, my Facebook list is a marketing list. I seek to keep it very business / cool person focused. I review work history, and mutual connections. I must say, lately, perhaps a few others have gotten in. I will do a purge if necessary, and especially will purge anyone I think is acting inappropriately (meaning not cool). You need to create your own criteria for what works for you.
Someone recently contacted me and said that someone that was my friend, asked to friend her (she accepted) and then he friended her sister. OK – for me, that’s weird. But for others it may not be. I will tell you that I respond to any inquiries regarding inappropriate behavior. I take it seriously, and I will take action! In general – here’s what matters most to me:
#1 You must include your picture and your work history. It is very unlikely I will friend you without this, unless you are my sister. 
Also – If you made it through without either of these, I will be purging soon.
#2 I care about who we have in common. The more the merrier.
#3 If I reach out to you, it’s because I am seeking business synergy or general good karma. If I am reaching out to you for “friendship” – It is because we have someone in common and I think there is a BUSINESS reason for us to be on each other’s networks. Or I want you on my network so I can invite you to events and cool things that you will want to be invited to. If you don’t use Facebook that way – no problem. My intentions are always focused on value.
But what’s right for me is not necessarily right for you. Live and let live.. friend and let friend! You are in control!
I think that “Contacts” is a better term than “Friends” when describing seeking business synergy or general good karma. That is basically good networking practice. I think that Facebook is great in easily “pinging” people, a networking technique. For example, I wished a Facebook friend a Happy Birthday and he loved it. This maintains a contact. I know that all the recruiters and sourcers love Linkedin for its business “contact” like relationships but seem to not have figured out Facebook yet. But in my opinion, the real networking seems to going on at Facebook for its sharing of personal interests and activities makes better contacts.
Having observe the social landscape, it just seems that most forget the norms of social etiquette, relationship building, rapport building on social networks/media.
Just because you can blast out 200 friend invites doesn’t mean you should.
I can identify with the point you made on Affiliate Thing about going deep and focused in following up after an event, rather than go on a business card collecting frenzy.
One inch wide, one mile deep, it works for relationship building, as well as niche development…
As an addendum to this note – I have let more “strangers” into my Facebook feed. I’m quite intrigued by what will happen to it. I suppose I can always go remove any “spammers.” At this point, I feel like if people are respectively within the Facebook community, I’m cool with being “friends.” If it gets weird – REMOVE.
Thanks for sharing Andrew!
Hey Steph,
Lemme know how your social experiment turns out.
I think it’s high time that social media’s evolved to having a ’social media jedi council’ come up with a social marketing code of practice?
I tried to go into bits of it with my post at the MyBlogLog blog entitled “Unlocking the Social Inner Circle Code” (http://mybloglogb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/07/guest-post-unlo.html)
Note: I hate people dropping extraneous links on my blog, so if it’s not appropriate, feel free to wipe the URL.
Do you think conversation specialists should post a list of social networking taboos on their blog pages?
When I started out, I was inadvertedly spamming the heck out of the big blogs…fortunately I know better…
What’re your thoughts?
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PS: It appears he “Notify me of follow up comments via e-mail” plugin has been busted by WP 2.3.1. I didn’t get notification of your comment. Matt and the Automattic team really did a number on our poor plugins…
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Awesome! I have read a lot on this topic, but you definitely give it a good vibe. This is a great post. Will be back to read more!
In my classes, major research papers were due a couple weeks ago, and last week, my lit classes had oral presentations. ,