Trying to regain control of Facebook friending

I suppose you can call me a Facebook Whore. I don’t go out searching every day for random people to add, but I do accept all friendship requests. Well, pretty much all. My criteria for accepting are as follows:

1) I have talked, exchanged e-mails or met you.
2) We have “mutual friends.”

More and more people are now requesting and I have been accepting based on #2. It was cool at first, but now I’m seeing a new breed of Facebook networkers that start resembling LION except maybe these guys are more annoying. Not sure what to call them yet the term Facebook Spammers seem appropriate. It seems there are those who add friends by Facebook Whale proportions, then they go out advertising how many contacts they have to businesses and FB app developers.

“Look how many people I can invite to join your group or use your app on Facebook!!”

Yeah I know. What ecosystem is complete without spammers?

I don’t mind being marketed to. If you want to get to know me so you can offer me products and services that are relevant to my business and personal needs then please, it’s all right there on my feed. Please feel free to invite me to groups that you think would be valuable to me. Please invite me to view your application if you think this is something I could use. There’s a way to do it, and spamming me with random group invitations and application requests is definitely not the way to do it, and if you’ve offended me this way I won’t delete you as a Facebook friend. No. That would be way too easy and well…you just might try to add me again and then I’d have to deal with ignoring your invite.

I’ll make sure you delete me from your list by writing on your Facebook wall and your Super Wall and whatever other wall you might have for all your contacts and my contacts to see not just on your wall but also my feed…and I’m sorry, but it goes both ways. That’s the beauty of social networking, and if you haven’t figured that out then maybe you should re-evaluate your understanding of social media because you surely don’t get it. You’ve got your hundreds of contacts that read your spammy feed, and I’ve got mine that read what I have to say probably carries more weight because I don’t spam. I don’t take this lightly.

I’ve never been one to publish some sort of Friending Constitution. “Who do you think you are?”one might ask. Sure, I’m no Mark Cuban (his Facebook strategy post is really cool…thanks again, Mark) or Scobleizer and to that, I’d say, regardless of who you’re friending, networking involves interaction among contacts. You need to get to know your network and yes, it does take time and energy, but the payoffs from social networking that you keep reading about requires that you interact with your network. So. In the spirit of permission marketing…if I am permitting you to be my friend, please respect my friendship guidelines:

1) If you are adding me as a friend, please send me a note on why you would like to network with me. I don’t require that we have mutual friends, but if you can tell me why you would like to be my contact, I would gladly accept.

Example:

“Hi, my name is John/Jane Doe, we’re both members of –so and so group — and would like to network with you.”
“Hi, my name is John/Jane Doe, and we have several mutual contacts in the social media scene and would like to network with you.”
“I can haz fazebooq contactz” is a sure add.

This one works too: “Hi, my name is John/Jane Doe, and I am going to be standing in line starting July 1st and I heard you wanted one but too busy to stand in line, if you’d like I can pick one up for you since I’m gonna be there anyway.”

2) Please feel free to write on my wall or send me messages, but please try not to send me SPAM.

3) Please send only group invitations that you feel are relevant to my interests. I don’t really care about your affiliations, but if you are inviting me to “Super Duper Special Republican Fundraising Event With Special Guest Karl Rove,” you clearly have not taken the time to even read my profile.

4) Please do not send me invitations to random apps. Do you see any vampire stats on my page? Do you see any Fluff Friends there? Thank you. Now please look at what I do have. Those are the types of apps I look for.

5) I regularly share links and articles on Facebook. If you find them valuable, please feel free to comment and share with your contacts.

6) Please say hello once in a while.

7) Please feel free to make introductions.

I do not mind making introductions for you, but please ask for my permission before you drop my name to any of my contacts. It does get to me and I don’t take it lightly.

9) Please feel free to write on my wall, but please respect it.

10) If you need my help with anything, I would be glad to listen to what you need and see what I can do. Please write a note. That’s what social networking contacts do.