What constitutes a good ‘friend’ on Facebook? What about a bad friend?
Many people like to say with a big ol’ grin on their face that social media is replacing our natural human interactions with others. I tend to disagree. Social media, in my opinion, isn’t replacing anything. It is simply another outlet for communication with others. Personally, it’s been easier for me to engage in social activities—real social activities—by linking up with individuals on Facebook, both those whom I’m already a friend with outside the Internet, and those whom I choose to pay attention to online.
But what about those people on Facebook that you and I choose to accept as our friends, but after a few months, weeks, or even days, immediately regret taking on? What makes for bad social media practices that annoy even the most hardened social media veteran? Here are a few rules to avoid being ‘that guy/girl/android.’
- For the love of all things holy, please, please, please do not make your Facebook game stats public. Nothing screams lonely and weird louder than you asking for help with your virtual farm on FarmVille, or more energy drinks for the ‘cooler,’ more urban YoVille that keeps your parents’ ear to the streets. Also, gigantic vector artwork of Little Miss Muffin holding up a handful of produce takes up way too much space on my newsfeed. We’re all nerds here: just keep it in hidden for my sake.
- Keep your status updates limited to one per day. Seriously, if you feel the need to constantly update the world on what you’re up to, there’s an app for that: tweet tweet.
- If you’re in a band, own a business, or throw parties, and I deny attendance more than three times consecutively, I most likely don’t care about what you’re doing, and never will.Kindly do not send me any more invitations to your bar’s mundane trivia night, or your garage band’s café performance. When my BlackBerry buzzes with a Facebook alert, it better be someone complimenting my photo, not your event invitation.
- Don’t obsessively comment on something or someone’s photos or updates in particular if you’re not getting a response.Usually, if you decided to write a paragraph under someone’s status every time they post one and they’re not writing back, they most likely don’t like you, and you’re just shaming yourself in front of their friends … repeatedly.
- Rain, rain, go away. I have deleted more ‘friends’ based on negative status updates than anything else. I mean, seriously, Facebook is not your shrink, and I don’t care how crappy your day is, we all have problems of our own. This is a virtual pond; just don’t go fishing in it.
These are the big boys. Avoid these mistakes and you should be on the path to maintaining your friendship with all the kids from high school whom you didn’t really talk to anyway. But what about some stuff that helps others take notice of you? This is a difficult situation. Most people aren’t that cool to begin with, so being vicariously involved with their personal lives is a task others usually don’t want to take on.
1. Check ins. Remember, people like to relate to other people and learn from them.I’ve heard of great restaurants because some of my friends have used Facebook’s check-in feature at these establishments. This has helped open a conversation about something that I could benefit from.
2. Clever and short. My favorite status updates are small packages stuffed with humor and wit.
3. Informative/non-bias/cool links and information. I check out your links. I do. If it looks cool, I will click on it and most likely share it if I like it. This is the whole point to social media that people often forget about. It’s a gateway to open up conversations and share information easily and sway people to get involved in what you think is worthwhile.
Not straying too far from the basic principles allows you to take one step forward in social media-hood and closer to ascension as a social media guru. Well, almost—just don’t complain about it online if it doesn’t work out.
