Someone asked the question recently about how to manage friend requests on Facebook from poeple who you don’t know.
Everyone has their own take on this and, like many others, I used to have a policy of not accepting friend requests unless I had actually physically met them at least once. But then a few years ago I joined a women’s business network and started getting friend requests from women I didn’t know, but who were in the network and friends of friends etc. After thinking about it I decided that it might be a good way to expand my network and so I started accepting them.
I was a little unsure about what would happen but the end result is that I’ve ended up meeting a lot of those women since anyway. It’s been a good way to get to know a wider group of people. It’s also been beneficial in getting myself and my services more well-known.
I starting playing music again at about the same time and started getting Facebook friend requests from fellow musicians as well. Again I figured it was a good way to expand that network and so I accepted most, although not all. One of the friend requests that I accepted I ended up in a band with and, musically, we’ve had an awesome couple of years, and I now consider him to be a good friend.
Someone else I know accidentally friend requested a friend of a friend, he accepted, and long story short, she ended up marrying him.
So you never know where accepting a friend request can lead to.
One of the interesting things that happens when your Facebook friends list grows, is that you start getting more and more friend requests from friends of those friends. There is currently a list of friend requests that I have neither accepted nor deleted, because I’m just not sure.
I do have a good look at their Facebook profile, their friends, and what they do etc. before accepting. I don’t just click that accept button without caution. If I have time I may message them to connect if we’ve not met. In practice, I think that’s a really good idea, but I confess to not always doing it. What that means is that there are many people in my friends list that I don’t know and don’t really feel any commonality or connection with, so I may soon end up having a bit of a cull, so-to-speak.
I find that you also are a bit more cautious about what you post, (I have a reputation to uphold don’t you know 😉 ) but you could create lists and post different things to different lists. Personally I’ve never taken the time to do that. I’m a bit of an open book and so what you see is what you get.
