August
19th, 2008
When facebook gets out of control … a solution
You probably have a Facebook account wether by choice or coercion. Facebook always starts of great but then as time goes on and you wind up with 100+ friends it begins to be no so great. While discussing this issue tonight I realized that I found a solution to the mess I refer to as Facebook. Currently, I have over 100 friends which isn’t that high of a number relative to many Facebook users. I am not interested in what Suzy did with her cat the other day or that John just read Harry Potter. However, I need to wade through that in order to see that my cousin posted new pictures of her son.
So what’s the solution? Simple! 2 Facebook profiles. It’s important that you set them up correctly in order to keep your sanity.
The Dummy Profile
This profile should serve as your public one. When someone searches for you this is the one they should “friend”. Upload a picture and make your profile as public as possible. When people request to be your friend it doesn’t really matter if you add them or not. I personally suggest adding them. If you really do care about this person and plan on keeping in touch with them then you’ll send them a friend request from your other profile (outlined below). For many of you your dummy profile will be your current one. The nice thing about this is that it’s already populated with great information. Remember, it’s not bad to receive friend requests. In fact you want to encourage people to get in contact with you. Remember, you have two profiles and you can be more selective who is friends with your main one.
The Main Profile
This profile is more like your private one. You probably won’t get many friend requests to this one. Acquaintances will most likely be friends with your dummy profile. You can fill in as much of the information as you’d like. Just make sure that as much of it as possible is visible to only your friends. So what happens if an acquaintance sends you a friend request to your main profile? You ignore it. If you feel really bad then you send them a friend request from your dummy profile. The opposite can happen too. If your mom sends your dummy profile a friend request you can accept or deny it. But you’ll want to send her a friend request from your main profile. Afterall, she’s your mom.
The Key Ingredient
You want your dummy profile to be as realistic as possible. This way your acquaintances won’t have a clue that you’re currently logged into a profile they don’t know about. You’ll also want to do a reality check about what to include in your main profile. For example, this blog isn’t terribly interesting to most of my friends and family. Neither are the sites I bookmark in del.icio.us. So it would be a great idea for me to add my blog’s rss feed and the del.icio.us application to my dummy profile.
Just remember to error on the side of caution. Once you open a flood gate on Facebook there’s no closing it. Now that you can start fresh…don’t screw it up!
