More Facebook Friends Means Less
Nov. 08, 2009
17 Comments
1,000 friends! 2,000 friends!! 3,000!!! You would think that the more Facebook friends you have the more friends you have in real life. Guess what? It’s probably the opposite.
I know it might not be intuitive but usually people who have few friends on Facebook are those who have close relationships with other people in real life. As opposed to those with many Facebook friends who don’t have close relationships to other people.*
So next time you click “add as friend” take a minute to think. Are they really your friend? Does adding +1 to you friend count really change anything? Does accepting some random persons “friend request” really make you more popular?
NO.
If you agree with what I’ve said check these Facebook groups out.
“The more friends you have on Facebook the less you have in real life”
“For those of who you who believe that the more friends you have on Facebook, the less you have in real life. Or for those of you who want to prove that you have friends. Honestly, we don’t care if you join or not. We aren’t Facebook w*****.”
“Less is More: Quality of facebook friends over Quantity“
“The brainchild of Jane and Amy in opposition to indiscriminate friend accumulation on facebook. We do not need to be Paris Hilton, nor do we want to be Paris Hilton.”
Facebook Dump
Just don’t forget, don’t add anyone in that group as your friend!
*Disclaimer: these are only my thoughts none of this is scientifically proven. And I am sorry if anyone was offended in any way.
17 Responses to “More Facebook Friends Means Less”
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Nov. 08, 2009
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Clinton Skakun, Lafon Wooten. Lafon Wooten said: RT @RockyReichman: Mull this over: More Facebook friends means less | Ben Lang, Entrepreneur http://bit.ly/3PGWOs [...]
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Nov. 09, 2009
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by clintonskakun: RT @entrepreneurpro More Facebook friends means less | Ben Lang, Entrepreneur http://bit.ly/3PGWOs...
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Nov. 15, 2009
[...] Friending abuser As I mentioned in a previous post, those people who add too many people really don’t have that many friends in real life. Friending [...]
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For my business accounts I try to add as many friends as possible. For my personal FB account I only ads folks I know in real life. Everyone should have two accounts.
Thats also a possibility. Thanks for sharing!
It is against Facebooks TOS to have more than one account, doing so can cause all your accounts to be deactivated.
“Please be aware that managing multiple accounts is a serious violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If we determine that an individual has more than one account, we reserve the right to terminate all of their accounts.”
http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=12321
I just thought you would like to be aware of this before telling others to do the same thing. I have not heard of Facebook terminating accounts because of this yet, but they reserve the right to.
Great point. There is a clear distinction between Twitter and Facebook, where Twitter works better for business. But what happened to the days when Facebook was the "real" social network, the place exclusively for people you know in real life.
That is the main purpose–and draw–of Facebook. If it dissipates, then we can only mull over in our craniumd what might happen.
Thanks, I definitely agree. Facebook should be personal not business related.
Although you should setup a Facebook Page for your business so that you get the exposure of your business to all of Facebook.
I don’t agree totally, I think you should have your personal Facebook account but add a Facebook Page for your business. This way you get your business our there in front of all Facebook members.
Plus you get the benefit of pulling your blog feed into the page which expands your blogs exposure. If you want to know how to bring your blog feed into Facebook have a look at my most recent post, it is for your personal blog being pulled into your personal notes tab on Facebook. The benefit will be that it automatically pulls all your blog posts and publishes them to your Facebook notes tab along with pushing them to your news stream for all your friends to see.
Hi Phil,
I didn’t realize the value of pages when I wrote this post, now I would definitely recommend having a page and personal account. Thanks!
I believe your "personal" FB account should also be used for business. There's a level of transparency that's refreshing these days. There's also something be said about being able to build lasting relationships.
For instance, knowing that your client's son just graduated or they just got a new pet gives you a great way to begin your next conversation with them (and vice versa).
I understand, that's also a good point. I still think though that business and a personal social life should be separated.
Just adding on to what has been said that while the personal and business lives should be separate they do come together to some degree. Finding an old colleague is so easy with Facebook and who knows – that could be your next best client.
If you have two accounts they will also overlap and the networking would be hard. I like the idea of 1 account, but agree in the sense that there should be some sort of relationship (whether business or personal) before accepting someone as your friend.
Thanks Alex for your opinion, looks like we are quite divided…
This has nothing to do with your post,
but I’m loving your layout/web design!
Thanks! I’m trying to take the next step forward for my blog.