dianaschnuth

Social Networking is a great tool for staying in touch with friends, and for making new ones. It can also be satisfyingly voyeuristic, seeing what your old acquaintances are up to these days without having to make the commitment to actually socialize with them.

On Twitter, there have been a few people I follow who have stated that they’re conducting a Facebook purge — removing “friends” who haven’t contacted them outside of Facebook within the last year.

That made me think about the demographics of my own friend pool. Being the anal-retentive list-maker that I am (is it any wonder I got into Business Intelligence and reporting as a career?), I tallied and graphed my relationships with all my Facebook friends:

Category A = People I see face-to-face or e-mail on a regular basis
Category B = People I wish I saw or spoke with regularly, but don’t
Category C = People with whom I’d lost touch, and am still curious about
Category D = People I knew once upon a time, but no longer have contact with
Category E = People I’ve never met in real life

Interestingly enough, I’m less likely to remove people from my E list than my D list, since I had to specifically evaluate the people I’d never met in order to decide whether or not to just ignore their friend request. With people I once knew, it’s harder to say no — for me, anyway.

I think that I’ll be going through my D list tonight and pruning out some folks. So, if you’re a regular reader of my blog and you find yourself missing me on your friends list, just re-add me. I’m guessing that most of my D list won’t even notice I’m gone…