Why I Won’t Be Friends With You On Facebook.

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Got a friend request yesterday. Have no clue who this fellow is, but we had 18 friends in common. Is that a good enough reason to accept the request? Not for me. I thought I’d message this gent and see why he wanted to friend me. That option was not available, but I had a partial view into his profile and the wall had this:

• Changed profile pic seven times in last two months
• Posted a link to his blog on someone’s wall in October
• Posted an article about music teachers on October 19
• Overhead pics included a young boy, Steve Jobs, himself, and a basketball player

The info page reviewed little except that he has a media company.
Strike One. Nothing happening here. I now noticed that we had 22 friends in common.

Moved on to the website; it boasted many clients and all the stunning social media work they’ve done. I didn’t find a link to a Facebook page. A quick search revealed that this company that helps folks with social media for a living doesn’t HAVE a Facebook page.

Strike Two. Sorry, but if you’re in the social media business, how can you NOT have a Facebook page?

Moved on to Twitter and found an account.  Close to 3,700 following, but only following about 1,300 back. Tweets were okay and made sense, averaging about six a day. Some days had zero tweets. I noticed I was following him. NOW I could contact this fellow. We’re now at 25 people in common.

I sent two direct messages:

Hi Sam*, thx for the FB friend request. I don't connect with people unless I actually know them. 


You are welcome to like my pages on FB...
... http://t.co/2V881Pv and http://t.co/lwiNDoJ ...nice to meet you! 

Got this reply: No worries!

Then I thought, let me take a look at LinkedIn. He had a few recommendations and his profile could have been filled out a bit more, but I thought, eh, he’s local, I’ll hold out the olive branch.

So I sent another DM:
LinkedIn is groovy is you want to connect there. But I have certain rules for Facebook that work well there.

Got this back:

yeah I totally get it I have changed up my Facebook policy and opened it up a bit more but was same way forever no sweat

My conclusion: Another person who is going to use a personal profile for business and is more interested in people collecting. This is just plain wrong! Get a room; oops I mean, get a page!

Here’s a few reasons why you shouldn’t be conducting business on a personal profile:
• No limitation on a business page. Personal profiles cap at 5,000.
• Who wants to be “friends” with a personal profile masquerading as a business and possibly let them see all that personal stuff of yours? Not me.
• Do the “friends” on your personal profile match who your target audience is? Probably not.
• Demographic and usage information is available for your business page; and personal profiles? NO stats. Nothing. Nada.
• Business pages have the advantage of advertising on Facebook

As of this writing, we now have 27 people in common. He has not “liked” either of my pages, nor have I received a LinkedIn request. And I haven’t accepted the friend request.

Couldn't find a song on people collection, but click here for one on star collecting.

Find me on Google+ and Facebook

* not his real name.