Anyone who has read my previous posts regarding Facebook, or farcebook as I prefer to call it, know what my thoughts are regarding what I believe has become a pariah of our techno-world. So I direct your attention to the silicon.com Weekly Round Up newsletter – 15th January 2011
For those of you who cannot be arsed to follow the link you can, without their posh fonts and hyperlinks, read it below………
Do you sometimes feel intimidated by other people’s Facebook friends lists?
Does an impressively large number of friends make your tiny circle of mates seem insignificant?
Relax. Just because you only have ten friends on Facebook, doesn’t mean your life is a failure – although connecting with silicon.com would undoubtedly be a step in the right direction.
And as for those show-offs who apparently have hundreds of best-friends-forever?
Don’t worry: chances are they don’t know many of their ‘friends’ and are simply adding strangers to make themselves appear more popular than they actually are – the social media equivalent of stuffing a pair of rolled-up socks down your trousers.
Research has revealed that many Facebook users don’t know as many as one in five of their Facebook friends.
There is that old saying that ‘a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet’ – but too much of that kind of thinking and you’ll be one of those characters who smiles at people on public transport while patting the seat next to you.
The study, by phone-comparison website goodmobilephones.co.uk, asked 1,500 Facebook fans how many of their friends they had actually talked to via the site, and the majority admitted they had never spoken to at least half of them.
In addition, the majority admitted they no longer knew at least 20 per cent of their Facebook friends. A surprisingly honest four per cent admitted they didn’t know at least half of them.
The majority also admitted they only talked to about 20 per cent of their Facebook friends, which means Facebook is a great way of connecting with old friends you haven’t spoken to for ages – and then ignoring them.
When asked why they had kept ‘friends’ online who they did not know, over half admitted they did ‘so as not to appear rude’. Almost one in four wanted to artificially boost the number of friends they had, so it’s perhaps not surprising that two thirds of the Facebookers surveyed admitted they had accepted a complete stranger as a friend in the past.
This is the reason the Round-Up is proud to cultivate a small Facebook friends list that only includes close acquaintances.
At least that’s the excuse the Round-Up’s got, and it’s sticking with it…
WrAnTz 