Now there comes a sticky situation. I’ve not (yet) had any requests from kids I know from work who are still at school, but I’ve got a number as friends who are now 18+ and at university etc. Those I know well are listed as full friends, but others are on a restricted profile - although I’ve got no great secrets to hide, I don’t want to be actively circulating everything on there among youngsters I wouldn’t otherwise be in contact with.
True, this is an unavoidable situation, but you can always just ignore people you don’t want to be in touch with.
You could always just reject them as friends. You don’t get notified that someone’s rejected you, the only way you’d know was if you constantly looked at your list of all your friends and noticed someone you’d asked to friend you not being there. I’m pretty sure no one does that.
That kind of spam was one of the reasons I cancelled my MySpace account. One “friend request” after another, each one with a photo of a large-breasted young woman (often a photo swiped from the site of a fairly well-known Internet model/porn star, or a pic I’ve seen any number of times on Usenet (so I’d immediately know it was a fake request without bothering to visit the profile), and a “cleverly” disguised profile that appeared to be somewhat legitimate until you found the oh-so-casually mentioned link to a webcam site. Pretty soon I discovered I could weed these out by looking at the “Children:” item in their profile. It always says, “I don’t want kids”. I suppose they put that there to imply that the young lady in question is looking for no-strings-attached sex. :rolleyes:
What few spam “friend requests” I’ve received on Facebook have all led to essentially blank profiles with nothing but a name, often a man’s name. No photos, no nothing.
I’ve joined Facebook, but I’m having my reservations right from the start - what’s up with them asking for my email password? Of course I registered with a spam-catcher email, but that left a bad taste in my mouth immediately.
Yeah, I had some concerns but I’m an assistant volunteer coach so my relationship with the kids is pretty casual. If I were the head coach or in a more supervisory position, I wouldn’t friend them (or maybe do the restricted profile thing, I’m not sure how that works).
I just turned forty and my friends are slowly migrating over to facebook but most of my friends on there that aren’t jrs are in their twenties. There’s only one other person from my high school class even on facebook.
What they do is access your email account and snag your friend’s email to compare with registered email. I went ahead and did it and then immediately changed my email password. I haven’t heard any complaints about spamming and it did find a few people I didn’t know were on there.
Have you guys ever heard of LinkedIn? It’s kind of like a Facebook/MySpace for grownups. You network with current or former co-workers, friends, classmates, etc., but the school stuff is only at the college level – no high school. There are no pictures or blogs, just a profile (that looks remarkably like a resume) and a list of your connections. I just discovered it a couple of weeks ago, and am amazed at how many people I know who are there.
LinkedIn does that, too, and it’s also completely voluntary. I haven’t given them my password, and don’t plan to: I can search for the people in my contacts list all by myself.
Was wondering what that was honestly, I got an invite a while back from a woman I contacted for a school project. The contacts I could get through her might have been useful if I wasn’t reconsidering my future field of employment, but since I am I didn’t see the point. But now it sounds more my speed than Facebook or shudder MySpace.
Well, it’s not a social site, it’s a professional networking site. Clearly it doesn’t fit your/your friends needs. It’s definitely not a replacement for Facebook or MySpace, which is why I targeted my comments at the couple of posters who seemed to be looking for something more like LinkedIn.
Well, I go to www.linkedin.com, and I’m presented with options to find people from ‘my company’ or ‘my school’, so it pretty much seemed like Facebook.
I toyed with it, and got as far as choosing to find my ‘school’ (because if you’re in the public sector, ‘company’ is a bit alien’). Evidently ‘school’ means ‘university’ (a mistake half-made on Facebook, too). The problem was, I wanted to choose a university which wasn’t on their drop-down list, and I couldn’t seem to choose or type anything else. Even though it’s in the top 50 of at least one world ranking.
Actually, that sounds really snobbish, I realise. But I certainly am going no further with that site.
GorillaMan, I’m not sure what you expect me to say. When I mentioned LinkedIn I specially said it was a professional networking site, that there were no pictures, and that “school” meant “college,” yet you seem surprised and disappointed to discover each of these things for yourself.
I’m not sure what your problem was with the school thing, either: I just went there to the site and pretended to add a new school, and no matter which country/US state I chose I was either prompted to type in the name of the school or there was a clear message that said, “If you can’t find your school, select ‘Other’” and then I was prompted to type in the name of a school.
I’ve already said that it seems like LinkedIn is not for you. I don’t know what you’re hoping to gain by repeatedly posting things that make it clear that LinkedIn is, in fact, not for you.
The ‘school’ bit is a personal gripe about American usage being imposed on an international site. But your first reply was in response to comments about social usage of Facebook, with no mention of it being solely ‘professional networking’.
OK, fair enough - to clarify, this option wasn’t available on the front page, where I tried it out.
Funny thing is, both have exactly 95 members right now. Other funny thing is, they’re all young. Why aren’t they ever actually around on the Dope itself? Hmmph. ETC: actually, you just linked to the same group twice. :smack:
(But yeah, I like to keep real life and online life separate, so I don’t plan to join.)
You network with current or former co-workers, friends, classmates, etc., but the school stuff is only at the college level – no high school. There are no pictures or blogs, just a profile (that looks remarkably like a resume) and a list of your connections. I just discovered it a couple of weeks ago, and am amazed at how many people I know who are there.
