20 Comments

Why I Deny Friend Requests – Keeping Social Media Valuable

Feb 19, 2009
by

I just denied another Facebook request to connect and I will tell you why. First let me say that it was certainly nothing personal and the connection was not irrelevant because he knows 54 people that I know also. However, I don’t know this person and have never worked with them. The reason I denied this person is because I am trying to keep my social networks (Facebook and LinkedIn primarily) filled with real connections not virtual connections. For me, real connections still mean I have talked with the person on the phone or met them in person more than once. I am not completely sure how this will ultimately benefit (or hurt me) but I do like knowing that when I see “432 friends” that I can go through the list and recognize each person and maybe that is enough.

There are folks out there who try to connect to everyone who is even remotely relevant to their business. I can see why sales folks may want to do this but not really sure why their targets would accept. I prefer to keep my facebook network personal and would love to hear from folks who disagree.

While I don’t approve everyone, I try to explain why when I “ignore” a request. (for the record I like the option on LinkedIn to say “I don’t know this person”. Here is an example of the type of message I would send to someone. I am not sure if I am better off not sending anything but I feel like an explanation maybe warranted.

Thanks for the friend request but I am only approving folks who I know very well, and forgive me, but I don’t think we have had much contact, if any. I would love to chat with you at an upcoming conference and get to know you before connecting on facebook. Please don’t be offended, this is just my way of keeping Facebook very personal and manageable.

Anyway, I know this may not be the exact content you are looking for on ReveNews but I figured if it is a question that plagues me, some of you may be dealing with it also. I would love to have this post spark a discussion through comments so please let me know your thoughts. There is obviously no right or wrong answer to this…that is the beauty of social networks…everyone can make them what they want.

Thanks for listening,

Peter

About Peter Figueredo

Having worked in the online marketing arena since 1997, Peter Figueredo has seen the ups and downs of this industry. He is currently the CEO of Affiliate Management and Search Marketing Agency NETexponent. which he co-founded in 2001. Prior to that his online direct marketing experience came from working at interactive agencies such as Mass Transit Interactive, as the EVP Director of Performance Marketing, and i-traffic, currently a division of Agency.com where Peter held the title of Director and helped establish and grow their Affiliate Marketing Services division. At a time when affiliate marketing was relatively unknown Peter was building and managing affiliate programs for leading Fortune 500 companies.

Peter’s company recently launched an Affiliate Marketing Research division called Affiliate Benchmarks to provide Affiliate Marketers with more insights and data.

You can find Peter on Twitter: @figueredo.

Filed under: Social Media + Social Networks & Networking
  • http://www.whoisandrewwee.com andrew wee

    It’s an astute observation that the “social web” is growing up, from websites merely being a bunch of text surrounded by html tags, to networks where everyone and his mother can become friends, to the stage we’re at – being socially relevant.

    Social traffic needs to follow the path of quality search engine traffic where quality > quantity any day of the week.

    Who cares if you are “collecting” groupies/followers on twitter and you have 50,000 “friends” if you don’t talk to them, don’t have any idea who they are, or even if they even read your tweets/broadcast msg/direct msgs.

    -
    Case in point, you took the effort to PM them an explanation and clarify the position you’re taking.

    I have a number of people in my FB queue who’ve just msged “We have a few friends in common, so we should connect”.

    Huh?

  • http://www.newedgemedia.com Trisha Lyn Fawver

    I go back and forth myself on whether or not to keep Facebook and LinkedIn very personal or allow people I don’t know to connect with me. At this point you’re swaying me to keep it personal and start culling people to help keep it manageable.

  • http://www.NETexponent.com Peter Figueredo

    Thanks for the comments Trisha and Andrew. My goal was not to convince anyone to change their mind, just to start a discussion. I hope to learn as much from these comments as I can. Perhaps my stance is wrong.

  • http://www.NETexponent.com Peter Figueredo

    Hi Linda,

    I should have clarified via email and I apologize. I denied your request because you listed me as a Colleague at PartnerCentric. By LinkedIn's definition, colleague means co-worker. Therefore, I denied the invite because (while I like PartnerCentric) I have never worked there. This is a confusing description by LinkedIn because when I think of "Colleague" I think of industry peer, which may or may not be a co-worker.

    I would love to connect on LinkedIn if you can resend with a different description.

    Thanks for the comment and the connection

  • http://www.NETexponent.com Peter Figueredo

    ok Linda, I have sent you an invite using the "other" category since there is no appropriate category for industry connection or business associate

  • http://www.partnercentric.com Linda Woods

    I keep my facebook limited to people I know or who are directly involved in affiliate marketing (and they have the same friends as I do). But I do deny friend requests regularly for similar reasons as Peter.

    Though, Peter, I have to say, that when I asked you to be in my Linked In, you denied that request saying we aren’t colleagues. Not only have we met on MANY occasions, but we’ve been in the same industry for years. If that’s not a colleague, then I don’t know what is.

    Thanks,
    Linda Woods

  • http://www.whoisandrewwee.com andrew wee

    @Peter @Linda -

    I think social networks have some way to go before becoming more sophisticated.

    On one hand, I may have seen someone at a conference or even been on a speaker’s panel with them, so I “know” them.

    At the same time, I may not know which email they’re using to authenticate themselves on a specific network (necessary if you use one of the “i know this person” connection routes).

    I remember LinkedIn is a little conservative in letting you add new people, so I’ve given up a little and used “Affiliate, met at affiliate summit” for the “We’ve worked together” or “Affiliate Marketing” in the “Associations” tag.

    Anyone have a better work around?

    I guess I could PM/DM/email someone over email or twitter for their authentication email. though that seems somewhat counter-intuitive to the idea of easy access to trust individuals on a person-to-person network.

    What’re your thoughts?

  • http://www.thedigitalblur.com Jason Heller

    What’s up Pete. As my shift lately has been working with clients on social media strategy, this is a really interesting post.

    I’ve been doing a lot of research and experimetation lately gegarding the inverse relationship between the value of the relationships within an individual’s network and the network size.

    Granted, that is a marketer’s statement, but it holds tre for individuals.

    I normally don’t post links in comments, but this one is very relavant.
    http://thedigitalblur.com/2008/12/21/just-how-far-can-we-push-the-dunbar-number/

  • http://www.NETexponent.com Peter Figueredo

    Hey Jason, glad to see you are a Revenews reader. Thanks for chiming in on this topic. Your blog post is very relevant to this discussion, thanks for sharing.

  • http://www.shareasale.com Brian Littleton

    Peter,

    I use essentially the same rule you use in approving, and try to send a note pointing industry members to our "group" on Facebook as a compromise, etc…

    I don't see the value in being "friends" with someone that I don't know or could ask for business advice/referal/etc…

  • http://www.NETexponent.com Peter Figueredo

    Great idea Brian, I should definitely refer folks to our NETexponent page here http://bit.ly/18if3y but its a fan page not a group so that is probably asking a lot from a connection that I deny…so on second thought I wont. We had a group but when Facebook released the fan page function we converted the group to a fan page and disbanded the group. Another good topic for discussion…facebook groups vs fan pages…I see many companies using groups when they should be using fan pages.

  • http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com Derrick Daye

    Peter,

    I understand your reasoning for keeping your network of relationships 'virtual-free' – if you only use them for personal reasons.

    However, through a business lens I think you are missing opportunities by filtering out those who are reaching out to you. We are all connected and anyone can lead you to or help you make a meaningful connection. A real-world example helped me see this. My hair stylist was simply my hair stylist. One day she asked how my day was. Not sure why, but I got specific. I told her I was trying to reach the management tier of a payroll processing company named ADP. At the time I was working for an ad agency and was involved in business development. To my disbelief she told me the President was her brother. He was and I met with him within two weeks. The cliche' takeaway: don't judge a book by its cover and if someone is trying to connect with you be open – there may be more there than you think.

    Having said that – feel free to connect with me on facebook or Linkedin.

    Derrick

  • http://www.NETexponent.com Peter Figueredo

    Derrick,

    I do sometimes feel like I am missing out on opportunities to connect so your perspective is very valid. However, your specific example speaks to letting someone in your network who you know fairly well (stylist). I would certainly approve a request from my stylist as I see her regularly and know her well. I am sure your stylist was willing to help you out because she knows you fairly well. This is usually not true of a stranger off the street or loose connection. For example, if the receptionist asked me to connect I would'nt since I never chat with her and don't really know her well. There probably is some networking benefit I am missing but I think it is fairly small compared to keeping my network manageable. Again, just my opinion.

    All,

    I wrote this post to learn about other perspectives and through your comments I have done just that. Thanks everyone…feel free to continue posting and keep this discussion alive.

  • http://archertc.com ArcherTC

    While I think this is a fine goal for Facebook, I believe that LinkedIn serves a specific set of business goals and has to be approached with that in mind. There, the most casual relationship to a vendor actually may have some weight and could be, dare I say, exploited to later mutual career, partnering or project pursuits. For those in the staffing industry, businesses looking for new customers, and professionals seeking entry into specific positions, who you know (or even claim to know) is still the most effective way to do business.

    On Facebook, I have been asked to connect with high school friends with whom I have had no contact for more than 20 years. I could make a fuss of how the relationship doesn't warrant an online link, but for those people who are pleasantly reminiscing about the past, I am all to happy to share in this way as it takes absolutely no effort on my part to do more than update my status (which I would do in any case).

  • http://www.fitnessSocial.com gogofit

    Facebook and LinkedIn have to be real. Twitter, on the other hand, was meant for following/being followed by virtual people. And people on Twitter are happy to be followed (or, should I say, flattered?)

  • http://www.NETexponent.com Peter Figueredo

    Twitter is definitely a different animal altogether. Every seems much more open with how they use twitter…especially celebrities. I just got a tweet from lance armstrong that his kids are getting ready for a race and he actually linked to a photo of his kids…now that is very personal.

    I also just saw a stat that 56% of people using twitter use it for some business purpose.

    feel free to check out how I use twitter at

    @figueredo

    @netexponent

    @affbenchmarks

  • http://thefreebieguy.net Tuesday

    Hi Peter! I agree with your point completely. I deleted an old account at another social network and started a new account instead to build up a more meaningful network. I think you were very kind to explain your reasons to your "unwanted" friend request.

  • Mary A.

    I understand to a degree. But how about when someone is completely in the same "circles" you are, accepts plenty of others whom are in those circles, yet sends you a "thanks but no thanks…but feel free to be my fan"….HA! Um, that is just rude.

  • Winson

    you make prefect sense here, but i have to agree it with Mary A. here. I find it puzzling that people say things like "Just because we have 40+ friends in common does not mean I know you" or "I only add people I know" when they have like 1,500+ friends. Unless they take down phone numbers of everyone they see on the streets, there is no way one person can know that many people at once. This makes me wonder why deny a friend request from one person, but accept everyone else or why single one stranger out when you have hundreds of others on your friends? this could be some form of discrimination.

  • Flasher78

    I just had my boss request me on Facebook.. Admittedly I do have a few randoms on Facebook, celebrities and what-not so it’s not like I can say that I only add people I know, but for the most party I usually only try and add people I know. Facebook has been great for connecting with lost friends, and friends from highschool. Obviously I know my boss as I work with him 2 days a week, but I think it’s a little bit weird that he would want to be my friend on Facebook, when I have no intention of communicating with him outside of work.
    I also don’t like the idea of him knowing what I do outside of work as I like to keep my private life and work life private and frankly, I don’t think it’s any of his business…
    Does anyone else think this is weird?