"Defriending": Hot Social Media Trend or A Dose of Reality?

A few minutes ago, I was checking out Facebook and saw that a long-time associate mentioned two "defriend" requests in one day. I posted a comment about that not being very nice, and he commented back that it was someone from high school that had reached out to him first. That made the defriend message a bit confusing (especially since the person didn't respond to emails asking why).

I already knew that you could "defriend" people, but I usually make the preemptive choice and only friend or invite people into my networks that I actually know. If I receive a request to join a network, I don't join if I don't know the person; that's why God invented the "ignore" button.

Since someone on Facebook mentioned a Wall Street Journal article on defriending, I did a quick search and read it on their site. Then, I Googled the word defriend and on the list found a phrase I liked: "Defriending Amnesty."

I read a few of these summaries and found out that "defriending amnesty" means just what it says: individuals with blogs or networks or sites will not be offended or try to find out why you delete them from your networks. Another site I read claims that "defriending" will be the hot trend in social media for 2009 as we begin to focus on quality rather than quantity in our online networks.

It seems to me that technology is making it easier to stay in touch, but also easier to hurt feelings or cause people to feel perplexed. Clicks seem to be leading to online cliques as people create their personal "in" and "out" lists -- or, just clean out all the names they shouldn't have added in the first place.

Facebook and LinkedIn both give good advice: manage your networks wisely and maintain quality relationships as you go along. We should know from our experiences with mailing lists, fax lists, and email lists that it's quality, not quantity, that counts.  

Comments

[Bruce Hammond]

Hey Cecilia-

Love the post. Very interesting thoughts about how defriending will become the new hot trend.

I have yet to get to the stage of defriending regularly, but I have found that I am doing so more on Twitter than anywhere else. There is REALLY a lot of noise in the twitterverse that I don't care to hear oftentimes, and the great thing is if I don't want to listen anymore, I just hit "unfollow" and I tune it out...

A very good lesson to those associations and organizations out there using this tool - it's VERY easy for followers to just hit unfollow if you're not providing value.

See you in a few days!

Bruce

[Long Time Associate]

Hey Cecilia, I saw your post about my defriending issue today, and I wanted to clarify one factual item. The discrepancy is my fault because I was unclear in my explanation.

I did have two defriends today, but I don't know who they are. The unexpected defriending by my high school friend occurred a couple of months ago.