Be careful whom you “unfriend”
by that damn redhead on January 15, 2010
in Miscellaneous
Something happened earlier that made me almost feel bad for somebody. Almost.
By now we know that “unfriend” was the official word of 2009. (I’m going to just set my Grammar Goddess cringing aside and go with it for this post.)
I’m in the process of (re)developing a brand for a client of mine, and while I know a lot of people in various disciplines of web design, graphic design, or any other kind of design in between, I had a certain former colleague in mind whom I knew would be able to conceptualize the perfect new logo for said client. I had worked with her in the past, had been impressed with her work, and she had expressed interest in working with me after the start of the new year.
I kept that in mind, and decided to take her up on it. I went to Facebook and tried to search for her in my friends, but to no avail. I remembered that she recently got married and her last name was different, so I searched again. No dice. So I searched one of our real-life mutual friends’ friends, and sure enough, she was in there.
Former colleague had unfriended me. To my knowledge I did nothing to offend her, and I’m left a little confuzzled.
No matter, I’ve got myriad contacts that would gladly take this referral, as it has the potential to be pretty lucrative and would be a great addition to any portfolio. But I can’t help but wonder why the heck this former colleague “unfriended” me. No, we don’t see each other every day, and no, we were never BFFs by any measure, but she was the perfect person for this assignment, and now … well, as my dad likes to say, “You snooze, you lose.”
The lesson to be learned from this?
Be careful whom you unfriend — it could cost you!
Image by robotclaw.
And people say you can’t make money through social media. Pshaw!
wait! Maybe she exceeded her 5000 facebook friend limit? hm?
I know, I was just giving her the benefit of the doubt.
This is a classic example of people not knowing who could really be of value to them. We’re so “instant gratification” anymore that the idea of just staying contacts for a while and developing a relationship is almost unheard of anymore.
And to unfriend you is kinda unthinkable. You’re SO connected to lots of different people. You’re one of those connector types and you really don’t know who you can connect someone with. crazy.
Well, I’m sure that you’ve got more than your share of other peeps to connect this client with! Their loss, for sure!
-Lisa
No, she was nowhere near the 5,000 friend limit on Facebook. What I do know is that she’s one of those super-duper private people who likes to hide just about everything on her profile from “outsiders” … which makes me think she has bigger problems. (See Festivus post below.)
And thank you, I definitely am my father’s daughter, he’s an old-school connector-type, meaning, he’s a connector who connects people and isn’t on any social networks at all. I like to say I’m My Dad 2.0.
Yes, I do have more than my share of people to choose from for helping this client, and now my problem is deciding who to approach – which isn’t really a bad problem at all, come to think of it.
It’s as if this scenario never dawns on people. The only time I unfriend (I, too, am forced to turn a blind eye to that grammatical bastardization these days) on Facebook is after being relentlessly bombarded by requests to become a fan of this or that, pleas to play Mafia Wars, or other such nonsense.
I can only take so much from an attention whore without any genuine interaction or engagement before potential networking value is surpassed by an unparalleled tendency to annoy. :)
Isn’t there a button now that says something like “Ignore all app requests from this person”? I think there is, because I use it a lot and it’s made things much quieter!
Do you think it’s worth approaching her? Then you won’t have to wonder why she decided to “unfriend” you. She should know that it cost her an opportunity, and you at least deserve an explanation of why she no longer wanted to connect with you on Facebook.
I’m not really losing any sleep over it, Nikki. She & I weren’t “real” friends in real life like you and me, we were just coworkers who were also Facebook friends. If you were to suddenly “unfriend” me on Facebook then yeah, I’d approach you but my relationship with this girl isn’t anything like that – I’d never invite her to a Jill Jack show with me, to have dinner/coffee/whatever. It’s just for the fact that on more than one occasion she said she wanted to get together after the new year because she thought we could do some work together, and she made no secret that she was trying to get all the freelance work she could get that makes me scratch my head. It’s not really my loss at all, it’s hers, and it was good blog fodder.
it definitely makes for good and thought provoking blog fodder. and i’m from the same school as your dad. you snooze, you lose.
i hate to ‘unfriend’ once. do you update your status 5 times a day with stuff like:
-”going to the grocery store”
-”just got back from the grocery store”
-”watching tv”
when really she should have been saying “annoying every single ‘friend’ with my boring, uninteresting, blow by blow of my boring, uninteresting life…and losing friends because of it.”
LOL! I can see why you did that! I’d have introduced her to Twitter and then sat back for a week to see what happened before I “unfriended” her, to see if maybe she calmed it down a bit, but yeah, that’s pretty lame. It’s one reason why I hate when people sync their twitter with their Facebook status … I really don’t think my Facebook friends NEED to know what I think ever other minute or so … which is why I might update it once every other day. Thanks for stopping by!