My Social Media Guidelines – take it or leave it!

I have been a Facebook user since 2007, three years after it made its debut. Like many other things’ technology, I’m always a bit behind the curve.

Ditto for LinkedIn. I first became a member in 2009 – some six years after it launched. Since then I’ve accumulated rather modest totals of Facebook “friends” and LinkedIn connections.

For those keeping score at home it’s 117 for the former and just over 300 for the latter.

I realize those numbers pale in comparison with others on both platforms some of whom have recorded over 1,000 Facebook friends and as much as 2,000 LinkedIn connects.

Wanna know why?

Because as elitist as it sounds, I’m very selective on whom I connect with on each. You would not invite people you didn’t know over to your house for drinks, right? Then I never understood why people agree to instantly connect with everyone who reaches out to them. Particularly on the socially-leaning Facebook which reveals reams of personal information – no matter how many safeguards they install to block them.

My rule is simple – if I don’t know you – or in the case of I know you but don’t like you – your connection requests quickly meet the delete key. I know someone with 2,365 Facebook connections. And no, that’s not a misprint. I’m sorry, it strains the bounds of credulity that they could know each one of them let alone share personal information.

I had a one-time boss whose ineptness could have filled a week’s worth of Dilbert cartoons who, after he was mercifully fired, wanted to be my LinkedIn buddy.

Uh-uh.

Then there are the Facebook connections that feel compelled to post three to four times daily with items as mundane as the luncheon special at their local greasy spoon or how tough it was to wash their standard-bred poodle with a garden hose.

I discarded two LinkedIn requests this week – one a bookkeeper from Mumbai and the other an investment analyst from Hamburg. Other than the fact one’s name was also Bill we had absolutely nothing in common – not even mutual connections.

So, it was Auf Weidersehen and Alavida to both.

I also rarely post on either. I’m not so self-centered to think that everyone cares what transpires in either my social or work life.

So, as the late Walter Cronkite used to end the nightly news, “And that’s the way it is.”

And it ain’t gonna change.