This post is REALLY long. I’ve included headings that might help you navigate the boring bits, but skip to the bottom because it has the best parts. 
This may come as a shock to some of you, but I have a lot of Facebook friends. As of May 2010, I am clocking in somewhere near 1000 connections, though I’m sure that kind of number is far from unheard of on the Interwebs. Still, I’d say it’s significant. I believe I saw a statistic somewhere that mentioned that the average Facebook user has upwards of 400 Facebook friends, although some sociologists get all whiney about the Dunbar number and say you can only ever really have 150 stable social connections and yadda yadda yadda. Listen, we all know there is a big difference between an on-line friend and a IRL friend, though often a personal connection can represent both. In other words, I think the sociologists should find other silly facts to get all uppity about and let us have our social networking fun.
Being a man who works in social media, I find it important to have many Facebook friends for several reasons. For starters, it expands my potential reach and overall presence on the Web (or, if you’re in marketing, it’s the more eyeballs the better). When I produce a new video, write a new blog entry, find something remarkable in connection to a professional venture, or otherwise publish worthwhile personal- or business-related material, my 1000 connections get to see that. And because I’m such an egotist, 1000 just isn’t enough – I ‘Add as a Friend’ just about anyone that I meet (this also helps me remember who they are as well as get to know a little bit about them based on their ‘Info’).
It’s all about reach…
Now, before you accuse me of thinking that my friends are just numbers to me, let me illustrate what I’m really talking about here in terms of online reach: a couple of months ago I had the privilege of producing a video of an awareness event for the Greater Northwest Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Volunteering in this capacity, I found out through the Chapter that the video was to air as part of a special program regarding MS on a local university’s TV channel. Through my on-line social connections I was able to inform a social networking specialist at the local NBC TV affiliate, who in turn relayed word about the event to their thousands of Twitter followers, so those followers in turn could be aware and come out for the event that day. None of this would have been possible if it wasn’t for my drive to ‘Add’ everyone I meet, including this TV station’s social media person. Although the our social network indicates we’re Friends, in reality we hardly know one another. But, by knowing her something great happened; it’s got nothing to do with merely numbers – every number is a real person, and good things happen when you’re dealing with real people!
…which brings me to my topic – the silent unfriend, or rather, the sad fact that the silent unfriend even happens.
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