Facebook. Can’t do without it.
Facebook is fun. Facebook is for business. Facebook is for relationships and Facebook is for everything, literally.
But I think everyone of you is on Facebook with a purpose. Some and even more of those listed above. So you could be on Facebook to promote your business, to find people to date, to hang out with friends, to share with people and form a community, to recruit people and so on.
Everyone has got a purpose and it is different.
My purpose on Facebook is to promote my business and connect with people in a friendly manner. I am not in for dating, casual relationship or time pass.
I recently unfriended a lot of people on my Facebook friend list and it seems that I will have to unfriend even more of them. From the trend, I want to make things explicit. Here I am giving you the reasons if I have unfriended you. This post will help you to know my purpose on Facebook and what I am not for 
You punch on my face with your chat messages ALWAYS
Facebook chat is a nice way to communicate with your friends in an instantaneous manner. I agree. But you should first be a reasonable person. This applies not only to Facebook chats, but with chats anywhere, gmail, yahoo messenger, skype etc..
First, please pay attention to my status messages. If it says busy, then I am really busy and it is not appropriate to send me a chat message. OK if you have some message that is really really important and urgent, just type in the message and leave me alone. I will surely look into it and respond according to its importance and urgency. Don’t push me because I have already told you that I am busy.
Second, even if I am “available” I really don’t have time to respond to “hi how r u” or “you are looking good” kind of messages. And, as I have clearly stated in my “About” page, I am not open for chats anywhere for this sole reason. I am not open for casual chatting.
If I don’t respond to your chat message for some reason, I want you to understand rather than sending me repeated messages like “r u busy”, “y are u not always replying” and so on.
Send me an email if you want to connect with me, if you have a question or if you need my help and I will send you a prompt response, if needed.
You tag me on irrelevant photos
OK I hate this a lot. I love to be tagged. I usually respond to any messages or updates where my name is tagged. But when I click through a tag notification to see that I am nowhere related to a photo, I really go mad. Why would you do that? To gain my attention? Well you got it for the last time.
You keep on inviting me to play Farmville or Mafia Wars (or any game)
No I hate this too. I don’t have time to play games on Facebook. I will rather spend my leisure time with my family. If I start getting bombarded by game requests after I added you as my friend, I have no choice apart from unfriending you. Sorry.
You wanna date me
Well I did not open my Facebook account on that motive But it is OK for you to think that way (not after you read this post, BTW). I just want to make it clear that I am not open for dating. Any such requests are fine, I will turn them down politely.
But I cannot tolerate harassment or pursued and repeated dating requests. I will simply unfriend you.
You add me to all groups you start
OK this one may not be all about you but it is also about Facebook. Facebook does not have an opt-in strategy, but follows an opt-out principle. I am not asked for my consent to join a FB group, anyone can add me to their group.
And, if I want to opt out, I can click on “Leave Group”. This is so annoying about Facebook.
Now about you - You know my interests (or you don’t know anything about me); then why would you add me to a group to which I am totally not related to?
You keep on poking me
I seriously don’t know what fun it takes, but whenever I login to Facebook I can see a notification that you have poked me. ALWAYS.
Sometimes, I try to be kind and friendly and do poke you back. And then after a minute there is the same notification that you have poked me again! Gosh.
I have much much better things to do!
You litter my wall
Oh please don’t! I want my wall to be clean, useful and relevant. I know that there is a way where I can “block” my friends from posting on my wall.
I should either block all my friends, which I don’t want to do because some friends do post valuable information and that is OK for me; or I should choose whom to allow and whom not to allow to post on my wall, which is a tedious job.
Posting relevant stuff on my wall is OK. If you want to reply to a status message hit the reply rather than visiting my wall and posting a reply.
If I really can’t control my wall updates because of you, I will have to unfriend you :(.
Takeaway
OK I may have sounded a bit harsh while writing this post, but I really wanted to vent it all out. Not just venting but I want to let you know that our Facebook relationship won’t work this way.
I want to let you know that I am a friendly, accessible and down to earth person. I don’t want to stay on top of the cloud. I connect with people a lot, I do a lot of social networking and I can say that I love to connect with people - one of the important reasons why I started blogging.
So don’t get this message wrong, but please “get the message”.
Even though Google plus takes up and even though the history of Facebook is strange, we need Facebook. I need Facebook and friends. So we shall be friends :).
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Loooooooooooooooooooooove it
This is just awesome, Jane. I have to add that not only people you are friends with, but I had messages from people I have never seen that have no in common friends with me that would say “I am looking for a serious relationship, please reply, you look like an angel”. SERIOUSLY!?
First, I look like anything but the angel (I always ask myself if they think I might be a boy angel, RLMAO) and anyway, my profile is visible to public so it is really easy to see that I am married!!!
Get a life people!!!
Haha, “boy angel”
Do you really get those often? I guess those are the benefits of being a guy, don’t really get too many of those.
Eugene, Oh so guys are blessed? I never knew
But as far as I know may be you get less amount of dating requests than girls but you do get them, right? There are also desperate girls around and some of them prefer only married men, LOL.
Jane.
Brankica,
LOL. I like the term “boy angel”.
Well, may be these people are so very desperate and they are not willing to listen to us or understand. I have turned down many relationship requests politely, but things never stop by being polite. Lesson learned
Jane.
Hi Sheeba,
Also I have the some problems what you mention here. The most of the problem is that let write a post in the one tab and if open facebook onto the other tab then the higher chances to blink the facebook tab and when checked it then shows a new chat window that show” hi, what r u doing” although he or she already know that I am a blogger and what will I doing? (posting or social engage) since they are our old friends so I have to do reply and our 4 hours writing post expand to around 6 hours. So the best solution is that creating different list for old, new, bloggers, business list and hide your status corresponding to them.
Shadab,
Ya that sounds a good plan. But I am really not good at maintaining so many accounts
Well I have to see.. if I am really not given with any other option, I will have to go for it.
Cheers,
Jane.
no no no, don’t create so many account while in the same account create different list of friends and show your online/offline status that’s it!
Yeah Shadab, that’s a nice thing to do. Even i do the same. The problem is i can go invisible to them but hiding status and posts is one hell of a job.
Truly said Jane … such chat messages are really frustrating.
Salman, I am glad that I am not alone with this problem. Almost everyone who uses FB faces it
Haha Jane, I love the passion in this post. If you don’t set your own rules to follow there’s a good chance you’ll end up feeling like you got smacked around all day by the social networking world.
I would imagine that everyone reaches their point where Facebook sparks a quick rant or two, I’ve written a similar post before and I’ve deleted more “friends” over the last 6 months then I’ve added. I do this because I want to separate my personal and business connections, I’ve noticed that those people that were friends before I deleted them just jump over to my Facebook Page. I never turn chat on, so if you want to get in touch with me you’ll either visit my blog to see how to connect with me or you’ll comment on my wall. No random face punching situations anymore for me and my productivity is through the roof because of it.
By the sound of things it sounds like you use Facebook for a lot of the same reasons I do. Good for you for setting your own personal rules and feeling passionate enough about them to follow through.
John,
You are using good strategies and seem to have a nice defense perimeter around yourself. Turning off chat helps a bit, but I really want to turn if on since I communicate with some of my clients through FB chat. So when I am done I should remember to turn it off again.
Glad to hear that you are super productive and successful with FB
Cheers,
Jane.
Hi Jane,
I agree that some of the things you mention can be annoying and from personal experience I am guessing that from the tone of your article you are addressing those folk that you have probably politely asked several times to stop their behavior and they have chose to ignore your requests. Happy blogging and Facebooking : )
Hey Karla,
Yup it is just for those folks and any other folks who have similar plans in the future
Jane.
I don’t even have a FB account currently, but can totally see myself typing out the same 7.
Part of this is why I closed my last account…
Ah, that’s interesting! You don’t have a FB account! You should lose a good portion of blog promotion through social media. But you should also have eliminated noise from your surroundings
Should? FB is by far not the end all-be all of social media promotion.
Dear Jane I like your list. I too get irritated by the constant game requests and friend request from people I do not know. Now I understand Facebook is a great social network but as you said there are just some things that are uncalled for.
Haha, thats a great way to vent out your frustration.
But seriously, if you have large list of unknown friends, you have to go through these deleting spam and ignoring invites. I too find many spam on my wall daily, that why i had to disabled friends posting on wall.
But on otherside, I’m all open, if any girl invites me for a date. Can’t ignore that… !
Anyways, i love the way you write articles. Thanks for the write up.
Sahil, that’s gud. If I get any girls I will redirect them to u
LOL
Sure, Thanks!!!
Wow, I can’t really imagine anymore good and legitimate reasons why one should unfriend someone as you stated above. I am “still” believe it or not a non avid user of facebook and maybe it is because of what you said. Most of the reasons I give go far beyond lack of respect and invasion of privacy. I for example also suffer from irrelevant posts on my wall and I would really have to find a way on how to prevent some of my “friends” for doing so. Have you figured out how to do this?
I am on that hunt to find it out Ditesco. Coz, I either know to block all friends from posting to my wall or everyone can post. I think there shud be a way to do it
San says
Nice to see that most of the things are felt by lot of FB users.
Sometimes, I feel the same issues when use it…but still can’t do anything…those are all our friends..
San,
Yes almost everyone on FB has privacy issues
Jane.
I agree with you in all your points. I guess people miss understanding what facebook is about. Thanks a lot for the post.
Faissal, it is very true. Most of the issues arise out of misunderstanding and FB is no exception.
Jane,
I love it. This is exactly my thoughts and beliefs about FaceBook as well. If I didn’t have a blog I would not even use FaceBook.
Justin,
I am not surprised. And LOL that’s true, if I don’t have a blog I won’t be using FB either
Jane.
I don’t know about using facebook for business if people behave and act in a reasonable manner or not, guess it depends. I don’t do too much with facebook for business yet. I hate to say it but even my personal facebook with family members I have been thinking about unfriending. I hate to make them mad, but it seems like they are always fighting and arguing with one another. I really don’t have time for that whether it be for personal, family, or business use. It would be much easier to unfriend people you don’t know so well than people you do.
When I first read the title, I though you were going to list the same reasons people will unfollow you on Twitter, so I was pleasantly surprised to find some real, legitimate reasons. I particularly liked the reason, someone keeps inviting me to play Farmville, because I can relate. Someone really does keep invitig me to play Farmville and I’m getting tired of it. I have no interest in Farmville. So I guess I am going to Un-Friend that annoying person.
The main reason for me why I unfriend one person in my friend’s list is because he’s throwing too many group invites and events. Just imagine how many emails everyday I’m getting for his update. He’s a businessman anyway so no doubt…
vighnesh says
well….. seriously u wrote the right thing .
even i am fed up with my wall with all these “farmville” and “mafia” shit !
instead of un-friending them its much more appropriate to block them ……. permanently . they will never spam ‘your’ wall or ‘others’ wall
Hey Jane,
Love it! I meet so many bloggers on facebook and they have added me because they have read my ONE of my posts and loved it. I have a “rule” there again; I only add people who have been regular at my blogs …ya, maybe I am selfish, but that’s who I am!
Also, I do add people who’s blog I frequent or I like their blogs and it helps me! I “poke” my family but that’s okay, they are forced to keep me on their list!
It really is amazing to me just HOW many people don’t understand proper facebook etiquette! I have had to deal with all of these things on more than one occasion, and most of them will result in an un-friend from me as well!!
-Laurie
You know, i also got pissed off by people inviting me to all kind of addicting and time-wasting games. Till i notices i could just block those games forever. It’s been much quieter since then…
So people has different purposes of what they joined this social networking site Facebook. For majority of them the reason of finding people they don’t see a long time ago, find more friends, play games with others, and I see the aim of building a greater friendship to people all over the globe. But then sometimes it somewhat disgusting to know and see those people you invited keep interfering and posting you irrelevant information etc. Good to know you’ve clearly cited possible reasons why we must be meticulous and careful in selecting our friends. Thanks for sharing this pieces of information.
Jane i agree with your 2nd point 200% and lots of my friends tag me without my permission and it really irritates me. I think that Facebook should have introduce a system that first e approve the tag request.
I have friends above thousand on Facebook. Maximum friends are useless. So I am thinking to unfriend such a useless friend and want to follow useful user.