Facebook Etiquette

Facebook is pretty awesome, isn’t it? But there are some very important things to keep in mind while spending time in this virtual community:

Don’t be a friend whore.
This isn’t MySpace. Nobody on Facebook cares how many friends you have. Don’t befriend every single person you’ve ever met in your life. Just befriend the ones you really want to be in touch with. And if it's an old acquaintance, send a message too.

Post a picture of yourself.
It’s really great that you want to use a picture of your kids or your pet as an avatar. But post at least one current picture of yourself in your profile. If you’re reaching out to old friends you haven’t seen in nearly 20 years, they’re going to want to know what you look like these days.

Update your status.
It’s one of the great features on Facebook. It’s fun and it’s a good conversation starter. And feel free to comment on a friend's status.

Don’t cheat playing Scrabulous.
Look, we all know that it’s really easy to open a new window and start to peruse the dictionary to find a four letter word that ends in “z”. It’s temping and nobody will know, right? But don’t do it. You’ll feel better about yourself in the morning.

Use your old name.
If you’ve changed your name, include your maiden name on your profile. Otherwise, it’s going to be hard to find you or know who you are when you reach out.

You don’t have to give karma to everybody.
Giving karma is a nice idea. But just because the program automatically asks if you want to send it to all of your friends, doesn’t mean that you have to. If you use it sparingly, it will mean more when you do send it.

Stop biting people.
Yeah, the Werewolves and Vampire thing was novel for the first few weeks. But after a while, it gets really stale. If you’re repeatedly biting somebody and they’re not biting back, please stop.