Last week I decided to set up a Facebook Page for myself as my Facebook profile was rapidly becoming excessively complicated thanks to the people who friended me that I didn’t know in real life. At the time I thought that this would be a great way to also expand beyond the 5,000 friend limit and engage with a broader audience. Unfortunately there are some issues that one runs into when trying to separate real friends from virtual ones.
Forwarding Friend Requests
The first part of the purging of my virtual Facebook friends was to send a message to each of the people who had friend requests pending with me that I didn’t know. This was the message that I sent:
Hi John,
Sorry I haven’t replied to your friend request yet. If you forgot how you found me, it was most likely through one of the two sites I started: AllFacebook.com or SocialTimes.com. Anyways, I’ve decided to make the shift to a public Facebook Page since I can’t manage all of my friend requests on here. I would love it if you become a fan! I will personally be responding to comments, so it’s just as easy to contact me there (or send me a message on here).
You can become a fan here: http://www.facebook.com/biznick.
Best regards,
NickP.S. I hope we have the opportunity to meet in person eventually.
P.P.S. If we’ve met before, my apologies … I’ve been running through a bunch of friend requests in the past hour :/
I proceeded through this process until Facebook had declared that the link to my new page had been declared “spam”. Crap. Now I’ve decided to hold off a day to continue with the process, however two people from the first 20 individuals have already responded with messages. One girl sent me this message:
Well I don’t know you so being a fan doesn’t really make sense. If you want to get to know me we can be friends on facebook.
She was the one that friended me and now appears offended that I won’t friend her back. She has a legitimate point however, the purpose was to get to know each other, however how the hell can anybody ever “get to know” thousands of people really well? You can’t! Hence why I was purging many of the friends who I don’t know. I decided to put the process on hold for at least a day while trying to develop an alternative solution. That’s when another message arrived in my inbox:
Hello Mr. Nick ONeill,
As per your this message ,now I am in your fan list http://www.facebook.com/biznick, I am also a social media guy and working on some stuff related to social media,. I really want to connect with you to listen you properly and stay touch with you, so my humbly request with you that please accept my friend request.
Best Regards,
[Name removed]
Now how the hell am I going to reject this kind man’s offer? I feel like I’m a monster for doing so. The point of this is not to suggest that I have a unique situation in turning down friend requests though. The point is that people don’t feel as though a Facebook Page is a personal experience. By me not approving someone’s friend request, they assume that means you don’t want to “get to know them”.
Perhaps the greater lesson here is that Facebook doesn’t scale for people who have a ton of friend requests. Most people instantly reply to my problem with “Isn’t that a good problem to have?” Yes, it is … but it’s still a problem! While I know it’s a unique situation, the only reason others may not have as many incoming friend requests is that they haven’t spent much time promoting themselves. That’s a personal choice.
I think the greater lesson is this: if you are going to make a shift to attempt to become a “public figure”, you should probably just start from scratch. Asking people to become a fan of you half way through the process is too awkward, and it ends up angering some of your real friends. What do you think about people who have a Facebook Page for themselves? What’s the best approach to launching a Page for yourself?
