ALIKATNZ.COM

We’ve heard it a million times in the media. Facebook is full of people who are snooping on what you are up to. These people may not be involved in your life the way some others on Facebook are. They’re old friends from school, acquaintances, people you once knew, met in a bar and so forth.

But instead of the annual Christmas card and letter, there’s now this Facebook invasion into your life. This week I decided to do something on Facebook I had never done before – intentionally delete people from my friends list. This whole thing was part of my larger move to make my profile more secure. Basically, if you’re not friends with me, you cannot see a thing. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

Part of the plan to make my Facebook more secure also steamed from the realisation that there is nothing stopping my colleagues from showing my boss pictures of that drunken party on their screens, from their Facebook accounts. Again, we’ve heard it all before about people losing their jobs over Facebook antics, and while I run on the theory that if I don’t want my Grandpa to see it, I won’t put it online, others aren’t so fortunate enough to have the sense of appropriateness.

But in deleting friends, I got an unexpected result. I had posted a cryptic status message, hinting at my friends list cull. One of my aunts once said, if you have less than 10 friends on Facebook, you are a social reprobate. I had nearly 170, and while thats not a lot, I needed to cut down on the noise. So I started culling friends. Once I had finished, I posted a cryptic message and the comments I got were staggering.

Alison Some of you have been eliminated, but because you have been eliminated, you can’t see this message to know

That status update attracted 16 comments ranging from people asking why to people celebrating the fact they had survived the cull. Thats where it got interesting for me. People were celebrating the fact that they could still see what I am up to. I might see some of them once every week and some of them I’m really slack and might see once every 5 years and some I’ve never met. But everyone was happy not to be deleted. Why.

The New York Times says that not all unfriendings are equal.

There seem to be several varieties, ranging from the completely impersonal to the utterly vindictive. First is the simple thinning of the herd, removing that grad student you met at a party two years ago and haven’t spoken to since or that kid from middle school you barely remember.

And there we have it. My actions were completely impersonal to the professionally sensible. And yet, some people I should have deleted are still there. There is a good reason for that too. They are people, who like me, have locked up their profiles, but for some perverse reason, I want to see what they are up to. I don’t want them to see what I am up to. So I created a friends list. They can’t see ANYTHING that I am upto, they can’t look at my photos, they can’t message me either. So I guess at the end of the day, I am as bad as those who are snooping in my life.

The most notable exception to the whole snooping rule was a promotion run by Burger King USA – called their Whooper Sacrifice promotion, offering free burgers to the people who culled the most friends from their profiles. Facebook ended the promotion when Burger King began to notify people that they had been culled in the name of a free burger. But failing Burger Kings notification, you can be deleted from a friends list and never be aware of it.

But I have decided that the noise of Facebook is a good enough reason for a cull. And I’ve given myself some rules to live by on Facebook.

• I will not invite people to play games/applications/quizzes
• I will not be actively seeking out people to be friends with
• The decision rests with me as to who is on my friends list
• I will join groups I believe in, not because you invited me
• If I don’t want my Grandpa to know about it, it doesn’t go online

I will leave this very long blog post with some wise words from a Harvard graduate. Harvard being the same institution that spawned Facebook:

Mr. Atwan, a recent graduate of Harvard (where Facebook got its start), recommends culling your friend list once a year to remove total strangers and other hangers-on. Keeping your numbers down gives you more leeway to be selective about whom you approve in the first place, he said.

EDIT: Some interesting links to read:

The Latest Facebook Employee Nightmate

The Facebook Entry that cost ‘Lindsay’ her Job

Facebook Firings