Friday, March 28, 2008

Facebook fatal error ? Hyper Friend Requests.

You may just get 500 or more Facebook friend requests this weekend. Yikes!
Will you check them? Probably not.

Facebook made a few changes this past week.

The published stuff said "We're adding new privacy controls".

Simultaneously, they added "People you may know" right on your log-in page.

Well how cool is this?

It's not.

I admit it. There were actually a few people that showed up that I do know and/or wanted to network with in the next six months. I sent five. They showed me a LOT more.

Bigtime backfire on the way?.

We all know there are a lot of 'friend junkies' out there that want to be associated with you (or maybe someone else :). On this blog I've been a proponent of 'opening the door' to those you don't know because you never know 'what they have to bring to your party'.

This new Facebook feature takes it a little too far.

There's a good chance that this weekend, if you've been around for a while, you're going to be bombarded with Facebook friend requests.

While this feature may be good for college students, or in other circles, it's outright self-defeating in most spaces. 'Invite overload' will turn off users.

So, if you did send a Facebook friend request to someone the past few days, you may have to do it again. In some cases, your request may 'get flushed' with a few hundred others without the user even looking at it.

This is one of those features you want to have to go and look for, and not have show up all of a sudden on your profile page.

Did I just rant? :)