Why are they friending me? Does business and Facebook clash?

By: Stephen Roesler

We’ve all asked ourselves the question.  Who is this person, how do they know me, and why are they asking to be friends on Facebook? Ironically, much of the time we cannot answer such a seemingly basic question.  The reason, likely, is due to the now blurring definition of a friend.

Since the onset of Social Media, the idea of a friend is rather different from the classic sense. A friend may not be your old fishing buddy or your loyal, die hard shopping companion. Now, a friend could be an utter stranger.

With over 400 million users, Facebook neophytes are volatile, jittery beings that are friending everyone in sight. But what’s the point?  Now your newsfeed is overflowing with vapid status updates that remain inconsequential because you haven’t a clue who the person is, what they do and why they accepted a friend request from a stranger. Many are building profiles based on desperation. And, one thing we can extrapolate from a classic friendship is that desperate friends rarely last.

This is especially true for businesses. As organizations grow their friend networks, they must remain mindful of who they are adding and accepting into their sphere of friendship. Service oriented business runs the largest risk. If we add friends because they engage in similar or complimentary business, we better like how they conduct business. Afterall, in some sense, we are vouching for their quality of service.

If the goal of Social Media for business is to turn relationships into clients, then businesses should seek Facebook friends that correlate with their industry. Before friending someone or accepting a friendship, ask yourself a few questions:

- Could I benefit from this person’s industry knowledge or could they benefit from mine?

- Am I going for quality over quantity?

- Am I geographically desirable to this person?

As Facebook continues to grow, the idea of a “network” becomes more applicable. Although Social Media allows us to stay connected to more people than before, we can’t have meaningful social relationships with millions of people. We must draw a line somewhere and I propose that we start by limiting Facebook friends to people who we know and marginally trust their opinion.  Same goes for Twitter. Spreading yourself thin with an abundance of fruitless friends and futile follows won’t help anyone focus their efforts. Instead, we will create a massive database of information that becomes unnavigable. Let’s not defeat the purpose.

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