Denver Social Media: 4 alternatives to Facebook "unfriending"

Mike Hanbery - 11.19.2010 8:03 AM

This past Wednesday, February 17, 2010, was late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel's first annual Facebook "National Unfriend Day."

Anthropologists tell us that each of us can maintain a maximum of 150 personal relationships. From this, we learn:

1. The majority of "friends" we have on Facebook are not, by this definition, friends.
2. Anthropologists don't have sales quotas.

Therein lies the rub. Many of us employ Facebook, actively and conscientiously or otherwise, to build our personal brand. Since our friends and family don't care about such things, this is a business pursuit, targeting professional contacts new and old. If you met me at a business networking event and subsequently sent me a Facebook "friend" request, I probably confirmed it. (If I didn't, here's what happened: Either I didn't remember you or I don't like you. To avoid this in the future, I suggest adding a personal note with future invitations citing the nature of our acquaintance and/or acting a little less pushy at networking events.)

If you've heard me speak about Facebook, you know that I'm terrified of Oprah. You also know that separating my personal persona from my professional persona is not an issue I confront. I'm too old, busy and boring to have secrets and anything that refutes that statement isn't going onto Facebook. As a result, if you're one of these business networking "friends," you get treated to pictures of my kids, random song lyrics and smack talk about how my favorite sports teams are better than yours.

I currently have no time for Farmville, Mafia Wars, What Beatles Song Are You?, etc. I may envy you for having that much leisure time but I don't have the bandwidth to care if you're Love Me Do or Norwegian Wood.

Jimmy Kimmel is not Oprah, and I'm probably not going to "unfriend" you. I may, however, employ one or more of the following actions to make our mutual Facebook experience more optimal:

Create a Group

You can segregate your "friends" and then customize your privacy settings so that only certain people see certain stuff. Unfortunately, this is cumbersome. If you're just getting started, this is a great way to go. If you've accumulated a lot of connections, put aside a big block of time, take some notes and prepare for a nonlinear process. Me, I'm hoping for some drag-and-drop functionality in the near
future.

F.B. Purity

This application automatically filters, "quiz results and other silly facebook applications," from your news feed. Just install and enjoy. One of the few Facebook apps I'll recommend.

"Hide"

You can keep me as a "friend" without going through the indelicacy of "unfriending" me. Just hover over one of my posts, click the "X," and then, "Hide all by Mike."

 Finally, you can influence what goes into your news feed. Here's a great article on how to do that. If you "like" our Facebook Page or "follow" us on Twitter, you saw this about a month ago.
 

Here's hoping your holiday season is full of friends. Thanks for being ours.

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