How Many Friends on FB Does Anybody Need? -- Reb MacRath
It seems we've all become obsessed with having thousands of Friends. And it's not hard to grow obsessed when the system feeds the mania. You've barely opened your account when the deluge begins: Friendship requests from strangers who don't know the first thing about you--or care. They hope to sell you their own books or plots of land in Katmandu or phone sex if you're generous and swear you can land them a date with Bill Kirton, Peter Leyland or, dare they hope, John Logan.
Even so, though the smarter part of you knows most of your 5000 Friends are utterly in it to win it--surely at least a few hundred will buy what you're selling...remember your birthday...or enjoy a ridiculous pun.
But recently I concluded that, for me at any rate, FB's heartless algorithm was whipping my poor tired butt. Though I'd pruned my list from 3000 to 1000, almost none of my posts made their way into the Feed. Fewer than two dozen names responded to my posts. And, of that number, a half-dozen responded with more than robotic Likes or emoticons.
What to do? After hard thought for a couple of days, I decided to deactivate the FB account bearing the pen name Reb MacRath. I served general notice of my doing this by May 1 and moving on to a new account under David Cotter, my birth name. Once I'd created the new account, I began sending personalized invitations to carefully chosen names. 100 to 150, tops, must be the membership's ceiling.
Four days after starting, the list has grown to 35. Here are some landmarks I met on the way:
1) If you'd like to go under your real name but have been using a pen name, make it easy for people to find you and to know that your invitation is really from you. This is especially important if your name is shared by scores of others on Facebook. Wendy Jones solved that problem by becoming Wendy H Jones. I had no trouble changing David Cotter to David DF Cotter (DF being what I use for my classical translations.) But, clearly, some established friends were passing on my invitations because they saw no connection with their old pal Reb MacRath. Then I saw how Helen Yee lists her pen name Eden Baylee in parentheses beside here name. I did some research, learning that tack is allowed and encouraged.
Come now and visit David DF Cotter (Reb MacRath) on Facebook!
2) Choose the size of your new account carefully. Settle on no more than you can keep in touch with, in a personal way once a week. For a group of 100, that would mean connecting with an average of 15 a day.
3) Remember how easy it can be to slide and end up right back where we started. I invested in a good-quality ledger so I could track my progress weekly. Here's a page reflecting my first week in progress.
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This is my report.
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