Friends in Social Networks

Posted by techgirl

Posted: February 28, 2009 - 11:31 am

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Friending has a whole new meaningHow do you decide who you will friend on a social network? How do you decide whose friendship request to accept?

Here are some tips on how to handle friending and being invited to friend on social networks.

1. Define your own friending policy. I'm a firm believer in having a "Friending Policy" for both your personal life and your professional life that clearly defines who you friend and why and whose friendship requests you'll accept for fun versus work.

2. Say why you want to friend. When you send out a social networking friend invitation, make sure to include a sentence about why you want to friend that person. Saying that you are a fan of their blog is a perfectly acceptable reason for friending. I can't understand why 99% of the invitations I get from people who I do not know personally only contain the canned message from the social network rather than a personal request. That isn't just lazy - it's rude.

3. Don’t be coy in your friend invitations. There is nothing gained from trying to be mysterious in your friend invites. Be direct and clear. If you met someone at a conference, try to include something you spoke about with them to trigger their memory. I'm so forgetful that maybe I did meet the person that is trying to friend me on Facebook, but I can't remember so any clue helps.

4. Don’t friend someone just because they’re friends with a friend. Trolling your friends’ connections is commonplace but don’t go through their friends list and automatically friend every one of their friends. Be selective and thoughtful about the process. They don’t all want to be your friend just because you have a friend in common. But if you seem to have more interests in common, that could be a good reason to friend a friend of a friend.