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Whose Facebook friendship requests do I delete?

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Yesterday, leading blogger, tech evangelist and speaker, Robert Scoble shared on Facebook eight ways to get him to “Delete Request” when you request his friendship on Facebook.

I thought Robert’s points were pretty good and mirrored some of my thinking when I get friend requests.

  1. Don’t have any public posts in past month. Automatically gets me to click “delete request.
  2. Don’t list your job title on your Intro/Profile/About.
  3. Don’t post anything interesting about the tech industry in your past 20 posts.
  4. Don’t have at least 20 mutual friends (I have more than 4,000, it shouldn’t be that hard). Even a few is better than zero. Particularly useful to figure out if someone is a real member of the mixed reality community.
  5. Don’t have a real photo of yourself anywhere.
  6. Don’t make it possible to follow you so I can dip my toe in the water.
  7. Post only selfies.
  8. Only post quotes or those stupid posts with the color background.

I’m not near as popular as Robert, I don’t get the requests he gets and I don’t have the number of Facebook friends he does.

But I am cognoscent of a number things when considering friend requests.

  • Facebook caps the number of friends at 5,000. I am only North of 1,500 friends now, but things have a way of growing on the net.
  • Whether people regularly post things of interest to me. I often receive Facebook requests from people who have posted little more than profile pictures over the last year.
  • Complete profile listings – job title, contact into etc. I am not likely to friend people who are looking to be private on Facebook.
  • Diverse interests and offerings. In addition to Facebook friends in the legal industry, my friends include journalists, corporate executives, authors, artists, college professors, financiers and others — in addition to personal friends. The more interesting and diverse my friends, the more value I’ll receive from my Newsfeed and the more interesting the people I get to know.
  • Mutual friends. When I reach out to request friendship I look for people with whom I have at least 20 to 30 mutual friends. Common friends is something I also consider with requests.
  • Sharing of both personal and professional items. It’s a combination of both that lets me get to know people.
  • Post only their own articles and blog posts. Too many lawyers use Facebook as a distribution channel, as opposed to an engagement channel.

So it’s not that I don’t like you, that I don’t wnat to get to know you or don’t want to do business with you. If I delete your friend request on Facebook, it’s because of the things Scoble or I may consider.

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