After being away from real internet for the past 11 days, I returned to find the typical couple dozen Facebook friend requests. Here’s the breakdown:

• Totally random/unknown people: 8
• Random/unknown diving or photo people: 5
• Random/unknown Sea Shepherd fans: 4
• Personal friends: 2
• Known dive/photo acquaintances: 1
• People known only virtually: 1

In this case, I accepted 4 of them, but I had to think about accepting the virtual acquaintance. In this case, she passed the test.

My Facebook “friend” list is really a list of acquaintances, and although my bar for connecting is rather low, I still Ignore at least 5 people for every one that I accept. It’s nothing personal.

My bar for Facebook “friendship”:

If you are someone I …

1. … know in person, we’ve spent time together in real life, and I have a neutral or better feeling.
2. … have never met, we have had significant dealings virtually over an extended period of time, and I’m sure you are a real person.
3. … totally don’t recognize, then I must be a big fan of you or your work.

I also have no qualms about de-friending people, although the amount of offense it takes to be removed is directly proportional to how well I know the person and how long I’ve known them. My Facebook page is not a public space, and I choose to make it a place that I enjoy.

My Twitter friend criteria is much more complicated. Twitter is very useful as infrastructure, but I find it to be poorly conceived and potentially intrusive as a community. As a result, I choose to keep the list I follow short, and even close friends may be excluded if our update styles are not compatible.

Finally, I do have a Facebook fan page for my photography, and a joke fan club. :)