Facebook And Its Often Misunderstood Etiquette

Unquestionably, one of the most visited websites online today is Facebook. The creator of the social networking site is now a self made billionaire because of the website, despite the fact that it’s just a classier version of Myspace and uses almost zero original ideas, and millions of people across the globe use the site on a daily basis. Typically the users are younger people, who often times put Senior Pictures up on the site which may or may not be from a Cincinnati Photography Studio and are tech savvy, but recently there has been a trend of middle aged and older people getting on the site. What some users fail to realize is that there is an etiquette associated with Facebook which is very important so as not to embarrass one’s self or friends.

One tacit rule of Facebook is that, if you’re a guy anyway, you don’t use the poke feature on friends of the same sex. Facebook poking is the weird “I’m too shy to actually come up and talk to you like a normal person” way of flirting, so it’s best to understand that before using the feature. Poking a platonic friend of the same sex can in fact lead to some very confusing and troubling talks later on in the friendship and should be avoided at all costs. In fact, even in regards to the opposite sex this tool should be used very sparingly, because it’s hard to imagine lots of girls sit around and think that it’s really endearing and attractive that somebody “poked” them, resulting in an annoying, small advertisement saying who the poke is from.

Also a Facebook manners issue is that of the friend request. Friendship on Facebook, unfortunately unlike in real life, is determined by essentially a formally written request which the receiver may decline or accept. As a general rule, most users will accept friend requests from any kind of acquaintance, leading to many people having friend’s lists that include people they actually loathe. Nothing is more annoying, however, than logging on to the site and seeing a new friend request and getting excited about the potential of a new completely superficial half friend person, only to find out that the request is from a person who has previously been rejected from friendship. The rule here is to not friend request a person more than once, because it’s extremely annoying and a huge letdown.

Finally, a last rule of Facebook etiquette is to not stare at other people’s pictures too much, no matter how good looking or freakishly bad and funny looking they may be. The reason for this is that on the off chance that it’s found out, you look like a stalker and that’s never in any way a positive thing.

Facebook will most likely only continue to grow in the next few years and make creator Mark Zuckerberg more money because of the numerous options and interesting features on the always growing, and always changing social networking site.