WTC

I think the different communications channels have different value. If I have somebody’s phone number, I’m very circumspect about to whom I’m willing to give that number. I’m reasonably circumspect about giving an email address. I’m very open about a website. Facebook seems to have a culture of maximizing contacts. It’s more akin to postal mail than email. For people preceived as high value contacts, it’s probably closer to bulk mail.

I’ve always been a big fan of yours, and you can look back the last 18 months or so and you’ll see a lot of comments on your blog from me. However, that’s what blogs are for.

Facebook, on the other hand, seems to be simply for wasting time. I hate the “notifications.” I added you as a friend on Facebook, because I think you’re a great guy. However, I wouldn’t be offended in the least if you dropped me from your friend list because you were tired of seeing things that say “Nathan Hays just commented on John’s wall.” As much as I admire you, we don’t really know each other in real life. I’ve met you once, and I don’t expect you to recognize me ever again. Why would you care if I’ve commented on somebody’s wall on Facebook? Who would really expect that from you, or anybody?

I have emailed you directly a couple of times in the past, with reasonable questions (like “why can’t I pay the difference to upgrade my seats mid game, when I’m surrounded by Sabres fans in the cheap seats?”) and you’ve never responded. Did I expect you to respond? No. You’ve got so many better things to do, like spend 30-40 minutes every day being irritated by Facebook. Is there any business advantage at this point in your career to belonging to Facebook? I’d seriously like to know. For every person you’d tick off by canceling your profile, you’ll probably tick off one irrational person every time you don’t respond to their stupid event invitation. Rid yourself of unnecessary headaches like Facebook. You may live long enough to accomplish your 101 goals.

This begs the question, “does Facebook make you an accessible owner, or make you look like you’re just keeping up appearances?” Why would anybody want to belong to a social site and have 3,000 “friends” who you have no intentions of corresponding with? Stick with blogging. It’s like the bumper sticker of the internet: One way communication! Tell the world what’s wrong with it, with very little real threat of rebuttal. Facebook, Myspace, and the like are basically the “sign my yearbook so I can show everyone how many people like me” of the internet.

As a regular user of Facebook, I would recommend getting rid of the people on your friends list that you don’t know. For public figures such as yourself, I would recommend creating a Facebook “Page”. On these pages, people can become a fan of your page, but that does not make them your friend. As a “fan” of your page, they have access to post on the wall there, but not on your profile.

I would also recommend going to Facebook’s privacy controls and turning off a couple things in the Search area. In the “How people can contact you” heading, turn off the “Send me a message”, “View my friends list”, and “Add me as a friend”. You can also control who you are visible to when people search. This will eliminate much of the issues that you are describing.

My email was submitted with this post. Feel free to contact me if you need any help or clarification. I won’t even ask to be your friend