Some time ago I read Cory Doctorows editorial about possible ways that your ex-coworkers will kill Facebook; because your colleagues and bosses will want to be friends on Facebook with their employees, and in process invade privacy of things they do in their personal life and would rather keep it private. Instead of denying their friendship request, they will either abandon the platform, or have more secret profiles.
Pondering this situation I quickly realized that some of the people who are my friends from Kiberpipa, are now my colleagues or in two cases, even bosses. This is why I decided to de-friend Andraž, who is currently leading development at Zemanta and I answer to directly. He was also conveniently sited at the opposite of the kitchen table, with Tomaž sitting in a middle, and being friend of both, able to monitor what is happening with our online friendship.
We tested the process on Facebook, Linkedin and Orkut, at all the times observing what kind of notification are sent to original actor, person that is being defriended, and mutual friend of both. Screenshots and details follow in the end.
Observations
In short: none of the networks notify the person who you defriended, or any of your mutual friends. The networks also do not present any obvious way to block the person from adding you as a friend again, and it also does not prevent you to add the same person back to your circle of friends.
More detail observation shows a couple of interesting points. Defriending process is very ascetic and does not help you fully express your reasons, as opposed to the process of friending that allows you to specify complex personal relationships. The person is also left with a short notice upon successful operation but is left wondering what exactly happens now. In my case this left me with a sense of panic because of the act of defriending person is something that should be a two-way communication, with me declaring the end of friendship and the other person acknowledging this; even with just an expressive silence. As such current social networkins fail at setting up a rounded online platform that would allow for proper inter-personal relationships.
Adding person again to your network just re-sends the normal invite without any special messages or warnings. It also does not seem that it has any effects on that person sending you a friendship request again.
What I would wish for
Going through this painful process of losing an online social network friend I do have some wishes how to make the experience better for all the parties involved.
I’d like to see ability to send some sort of notification to the person that I am defriending (in an optional matter), maybe even with a custom message. It would also be nice to somehow notify our mutual friends of that, probably the best way would be by the same event notification that lists new friendships in your network.
It would be also nice to have a bit more focus on having a vivid social life with ability to lose friends if you are inactive for long enough time, just like in a real life and this way stimulate and simulate real life.
Screenshots of the process
Defriending of a person is somehow hidden. You have to find them through your list of friends and then select Remove friend option.
Notification to me
A short notice on successful disconnect.
Notification to ex-friend
None!
Notification to mutual friend(s)
None!
Linked in also does not make it very obvious how to break connection. You can not do it from the profile page, but have to go to your “address book”, find the connection on that screen and remove it.
Notification to me
A short notice on successful disconnect.
Notification to ex-friend
None!
Notification to mutual friend(s)
None!
Orkut
Googles social network has a similar concept of removing friends as Facebook. You find the person in the address list and select the delete option.
Notification to me
A short notice on successful disconnect.
Notification to ex-friend
None!
Notification to mutual friend(s)
None!
I don’t think de-friending your boss would stop him from spying on you if he wanted.. If you really wanted that, I guess you should de-friend everyone you know, who knows someone, who knows your boss.
I’m still not getting this social networking thing though. 5 years ago I was considered a freak for hanging around forums and icq, today I’m lame for not having a facebook or myspace account. What has happened during these 5 years? But I have a flickr account, a gravatar, an openid, … and again that’s considered geeky. Should I just wait a few years?
Losing a friend.
The word loosing has no meaning (but loosening does).
Thanks jype. Fixed.
Dusan, you should use whatever your girlfriend uses. This will allow you to stay hip all the time 🙂
Facebook now tells you that the friend you are removing will not be notified. But I wonder, do you stay on their friend list, and can they still see your full profile? If so, this amazes me and certainly does not meet expectations.
Trying to figure outin which sense your comments are “less nice” than before.
The only problem is that I don’t know how nice were your comments before, so it doesn’t help 😉
See you!
I think it’s tough to say why you are defriending- I just defriended someone on FB because I acknowledged to myself that I didn’t enjoy her company at dinner, rarely talked to her, so why be up on every little status change? Or when you’re breaking up with someone, do they really need to know why you defriended them? It’s kind of obvious. I think the more people use social networks the more they realize that it’s easier to not add acquaintances in the first place. Question for you- while Andrez wasn’t notified of being dropped, did he see you in his friendlist? In other words, is the functionality bidirectional or just unidirectional?
Anna: Andraz also stopped seeing me in his friends list. It’s bidirectional.
It's been awhile since you posted this entry. I found it when I had some questions about how others felt about losing friends or being the dumpee on Facebook. I found you post thoughtful and it helped me make a decision about how I will manage my friends from now on. Thanks!