4 ms·

The No. 1 reason for unfriending on Facebook? "frequent, unimportant posts."

11 points by freejoe76 16y ago

thomas 16y ago
anyone surprised? probably the same goes for unfollowing on twitter
- kscaldef 16y ago
  Actually, mildly so since Facebook gives you the ability to "Hide" people.
_delirium 16y ago
It seems many people must have a lot of Facebook friends they don't really know? I don't think I'd remove an actual friend, or even moderate acquaintance, simply because they posted too much unimportant stuff, or posted political/religious stuff I didn't want to see--- I'd just hide their posts from my feed. But I could see it being an impetus to remove someone I realized I didn't actually know. Or perhaps the "hide posts from feed" thing isn't a widely known alternative?
- fossuser 16y ago
  I think some people have hundreds of friends they tangentially know or don't really care about. If at all inconvenienced they realize they're not interested in having them as a facebook friend anyway. Why anyone would bother with a study on a topic as trivial as facebook defriending still confuses me though.
- mxavier 16y ago
  It's kind of tricky. I don't have a big problem with friends of mine who post their Farmville junk on their streams because it is dead simple to block those types of updates. Unfortunately, facebook doesn't offer a "filter this user's complaints about things you don't care about" so your options are to unfriend or block them from your stream. If you use Facebook mostly for the stream, if you block all stream posts, you might as well just remove them.
  - 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago
    People who invite me to be in their mafia today, their farm tomorrow, their wizard coven tomorrow, their durg ring the next day... they need to go away.
  - tim_iles 16y ago
    In the summer I made a Chrome extension to block status updates about the World Cup from my notifications stream, and replace them with a philosophical quote from twitter, or a picture from Flickr's API. It worked, and was fun. I should resurrect that project, and blog about my experience creating it.
jlgbecom 16y ago
Better ability to categorize friends and have targeted "feeds" would help mitigate this.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
27182818284 16y ago
Often comedians joke, "Nobody cares about what you ate for breakfast!" But that isn't true! Your significant other does care and maybe your friend who gave you the recipe. The problem is that it isn't easy to prioritize certain items to certain people. I don't care what a friend from high school ate, but I do find it interesting to see what a friend who is a professional chef makes each night because it is often interesting to read and opens conversations. I believe this has been submitted to HN before and I find it to have a lot of good insights into what social networks do vs how real life actually works. http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2 http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ... (it is long but worth it)
S_A_P 16y ago
I actually ended up "unfriending" facebook all together for frequent unimportant posts. I also found myself getting irritated with friends and family members from all the group invites, farmville updates, etc. and figured that facebook was mainly serving to undermine my real relationships with people. I have noticed Im much happier (and have much more free time) since I have kicked the facebook habit. Not trying to sound preachy though, do what makes you happy.
9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago
google for: Annoying Facebook Girl Meme

11 points by freejoe76 16y ago

thomas 16y ago

anyone surprised? probably the same goes for unfollowing on twitter

kscaldef 16y ago
Actually, mildly so since Facebook gives you the ability to "Hide" people.

_delirium 16y ago

It seems many people must have a lot of Facebook friends they don't really know? I don't think I'd remove an actual friend, or even moderate acquaintance, simply because they posted too much unimportant stuff, or posted political/religious stuff I didn't want to see--- I'd just hide their posts from my feed. But I could see it being an impetus to remove someone I realized I didn't actually know. Or perhaps the "hide posts from feed" thing isn't a widely known alternative?

fossuser 16y ago
I think some people have hundreds of friends they tangentially know or don't really care about. If at all inconvenienced they realize they're not interested in having them as a facebook friend anyway. Why anyone would bother with a study on a topic as trivial as facebook defriending still confuses me though.
mxavier 16y ago
It's kind of tricky. I don't have a big problem with friends of mine who post their Farmville junk on their streams because it is dead simple to block those types of updates. Unfortunately, facebook doesn't offer a "filter this user's complaints about things you don't care about" so your options are to unfriend or block them from your stream. If you use Facebook mostly for the stream, if you block all stream posts, you might as well just remove them.
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago
  People who invite me to be in their mafia today, their farm tomorrow, their wizard coven tomorrow, their durg ring the next day... they need to go away.
- tim_iles 16y ago
  In the summer I made a Chrome extension to block status updates about the World Cup from my notifications stream, and replace them with a philosophical quote from twitter, or a picture from Flickr's API. It worked, and was fun. I should resurrect that project, and blog about my experience creating it.

jlgbecom 16y ago

Better ability to categorize friends and have targeted "feeds" would help mitigate this.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

27182818284 16y ago

Often comedians joke, "Nobody cares about what you ate for breakfast!" But that isn't true! Your significant other does care and maybe your friend who gave you the recipe. The problem is that it isn't easy to prioritize certain items to certain people. I don't care what a friend from high school ate, but I do find it interesting to see what a friend who is a professional chef makes each night because it is often interesting to read and opens conversations. I believe this has been submitted to HN before and I find it to have a lot of good insights into what social networks do vs how real life actually works. http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2 http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ... (it is long but worth it)

S_A_P 16y ago

I actually ended up "unfriending" facebook all together for frequent unimportant posts. I also found myself getting irritated with friends and family members from all the group invites, farmville updates, etc. and figured that facebook was mainly serving to undermine my real relationships with people. I have noticed Im much happier (and have much more free time) since I have kicked the facebook habit. Not trying to sound preachy though, do what makes you happy.

9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago

google for: Annoying Facebook Girl Meme