Facebook for Self-Promoters: Undiluted Commercialism Will Get You Unfriended

In the past few months, I’ve become a lot more rigid in my friending behavior. Before then, if you wanted to be my Facebook friend, all you had to do was hit “add friend.” But as I got more into the social networking space and received more friend requests from random people I didn’t know, I started asking myself about what kinds of behaviors I found acceptable in an e-friend.

I’ve already written (and spoken) at some length about why I’ve stopped accepting friend requests from random people without an explanatory personal message. After all, if you can’t take the time to put your friend request in context, why would I want to take the time to get to know you?

A more recent item on my list of unacceptable behaviors is spamminess. I’ve had a couple of people friend me now, only to send me nothing but self-promotional messages and make self-promotional postings on my wall. I even had one friend who sucked my e-mail address out of Facebook and send me a completely self-promotional e-mail that started with the words “Dear Facebook Friend.”

Be forewarned, these kinds of behaviors are increasingly common on Facebook. And they will get you unfriended if you persist. If you request my friendship on Facebook I’m going to assume that you have an interest in me personally. If your behavior proves that assumption wrong, I’m not going to keep you around.

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