How well do you need to know someone...

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...before you add them on facebook?

The trend seems to be the "I know you from somewhere" level.

I have the problem of often needing to know people really well before I allow chat etc... maybe partly a personal distrust or let down by people in general, but then again I also have to deal with the guilt of rejecting so many, but with only so many hours in one day I would rather be in contact with more than just one, as often i find that personal relationships are all too consuming and unlike my family which have reason, seem pointless at times... and often do not take the time to understand when I just need a break from time to time, friendships on my terms never seems to work, and neuro typical I usually never quite get, but my family are often more than I can deal with anyway and guess my main focus right now, not sure I could deal with more than my family on a personal leve, which I find one to one chat often is...

i have been on facebook for a year and i posted much stuff to there. i am there because a very nice girl i met on an asperger forum invited me to join facebook so we could share stuff.
but she gets new friends every day, and she is a very social party animal with hundreds of facebook friends who are all trendy.

she used to comment on my new posts, thereby alerting all her friends to the fact i exist, but none the less, no one ever asked to be my friend on facebook.

so i have only one friend on facebook and she has long forgotten about boring old cardigan wearing me. ( i do not wear cardigans but she mentioned it once to me)

i did see other people's comments to her comments about what i posted (before she lost interest).
in one post she said "wow that is freakily good!! !" and one of her friends said "yeah freakily is the word!! ! what a dumb ass"

she said "lol" to that person and well whatever.

this was my avatar. it is me, but i was busy with something else when the shot was taken.



maybe it was not welcoming enough.

I've been on Facebook a few months. Clearly I'm older than most of the people there! I have 6 friends, all of whom I've known for at least 10 years and are in different countries to me, so I don't use it for planning my social life but mostly (sadly enough) for sharing photos of my kids.

My friends vary from having more than 300 friends (he uses it for business contacts) right down to 2 (too sociable to find the internet friendly). So I guess the answer is whatever feels right for you. I wouldn't want to have a Facebook friend I didn't know pretty well in meatspace but I guess I'm too old (at 39) to adapt easily.

When I had a facebook, I added anyone that added me from school. This caused a lot of harassment from classmates (tagging me to inappropriate pictures, leaving inappropriate comments, ect) that I finally deleted it.

I think if I were to make another one I would only add people that I knew well and that I trust for the most part.

Do you know what is really annoying? I have no friends from college, as I had no friends at college. Yet, this woman, whom I don't remember, added me as a friend and keeps sending out emails for us to share our college memories of being together. She is my opposite politically and religious/spiritually and her comments are annoying. I don't know why she added me. I don't even know who she is.

I usually only add people on there if I know them well enough to have their mobile number, though I have couple of friends on there who I lost contact with and managed find while looking through my friends friend lists.

I'd say if you have class with that person, if you meet them at a party, or if you treat each other amicably while in passing, this should be enough to constitute a friend request. Just don't put too much information about yourself on Facebook - if they really want to know EVERYTHING about you they can just contact you!

it depends on the person but it seems pretty kosher to add someone if you know them well enough to put a name to a face, i.e. you hung out at a party for a while so you add them the next day, or you've been talking to someone in your class after the last few lectures, that kind of thing.

also +1 to not putting too much info, they DO sell your information and i've got firsthand experience with it. I moved into a house with three other people but i never signed a lease because someone else was supposed to move in but she ended up not returning to university so i just forward her the rent payments every month since her name's on the lease. so officially i don't live here, i always use my cell phone when i'm calling people so only my immediate family has the number to the house, and the only other place that might know my phone number here is my university, but i don't think they do and they don't sell information. so i put my new home phone number on facebook and set it to "friends only" access, so that it wouldn't be available to anyone i don't know, and yet my roommate answered a phone call from virgin wireless (i've never had any contact with them before) asking for me by name. I've thought it over many times and i don't know how they could have gotten my number from anywhere other than facebook.

To be honest, all these social network sites scare me. I've been on Facebook now for a year and a half and at first I was all excited about it, but now that I have matured (I am 25), I feel that we give too much information out today. Something you did or wrote on Facebook when you were 17 or 18 can be dug up two decades from now and give out more information than necessary. Plus, I don't like the fact that people can tag me in pictures without my permission first. I've stopped updating my status and posting lots of pictures because I don't want people to know what I do and where I am all the time. I want to keep many of these things to myself and don't want all of my 100+ friends to know I did this and that. I also never put applications into my profile.....they are a waste of time. Furthermore all of my pictures are from 2005 on.....I never post any of my pictures as a teen or a baby (too much information!)

Until last month, I had about 165 friends which I have met in schools and the different coutnries I've travelled to. I've de-friended about 25 of them who I do not see at all and do not expect to see in the future. I think I need to de-friend several others. Too much information really......and please save me from the drama of revealing the start of relationships and then the "George is no longer in a relationship" thing. I mean, how dumb can people be! The second they start a relationship with someone, they announce it on Facebook and one month later they've broken up and announce THAT on Facebook as well.

We have really become a society that does not respect privacy. Due to social networking sites like Facebook and My Space, people have been reading less and become more self addicted. Now everyone things that they are a celebrity!

I'm trying to figure this out as well. I currently have ten "friends" on my facebook. Most are old friends I don't see or even communicate with very much at all (if ever) and a few others are some of their friends who I don't really know well and don't ever talk to. The reason I got a facebook account was to try to connect with people from my current school, however, I've felt too unsure to ever "add" anyone because I don't know anyone all that well. At most, there's a few kids who might say "hello" in the hall or maybe talk to me for a few minutes if class is slow, but I still don't know if it would be appropriate to "add" them.

Nice avatar, by the way. I'm a major "Pumpkin Head".

This is a really useful topic! I've never understood facebook and have in fact deleted my account a number of times out of pure frustration. Face-to-face and telephone communication with other people have enough rules and I often can't bear learning a whole new set of rules for the internet as well. I have always gone back to it though because what few close friends I have are going to college in other parts of the country and facebook is a very easy way to keep in touch. I never add people as friends, I just wait for them to add me, because I'm always afraid that I don't know them well enough. But from what everyone here is saying, it sounds like I have been very conservative about who I've "friended."

Okay, I've had it 24 hours or so, and I've got ten friends... mostly people I've met around uni and people I knew from highschool. One thing I've notced is, yeah, people will add you if they vaguely know you from anywhere... two girls I wasn't really friends with/never really spoke to have sent me friend requests, and it kind of annoys me. I feel like seding them a message...like,"you didn't speak to me at high school, why do you want to be my 'friend' now?" ... and I can't really deny their friend request, because that's just rude... lol

I just add the people who request me. I rarely ever send a friend request... I'm afraid people will think I'm creepy, or that I don't know them well enough to be adding them.

Haha, so I guess I don't know the answer.