Facebook Friendships

Last night I was looking at my list of Facebook friends and wondering where they all came from. Right now my profile says that I have 544 Facebook friends. I have a whopping 38 followers on Twitter and an astounding 9 connections on LinkedIn. I have about 60 friends in circles at Google+.

Most of my Facebook friends I have actually met. That makes sense. It's actually odd that I have a great number of "friends" that I haven't met and many that I haven't seen in a very long time. Most of the "haven't seen in a very long time" friends are classmates or friends from my hometown of Chillicothe IL. Some are relatives or friends of the family.

How does one end up with so many friends that they haven't met?

For me, a lot of the "friends I've never met" have come from the Blogosphere. My blogging buddies come from all over. Most of them are in the US, but many are not. I do follow blogs of people that I know and have actually met, but I think I have more blogger friends that I haven't met--but would really like to meet. Maybe a world tour to meet by blogging friends would be cool. Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia, UAE, South Africa, England, Mexico, and even Iraq. Also the east and west coasts of the US as well as the southern states, the mountain states and the Midwest. And I might as well include Canada and visit the friends that we met while on vacation.

Several of my blog friends turned Facebook friends are no longer blogging. I think that Facebook has some how managed to siphon off the daily minutes once given to blogging and trashed them in the great time sucking black-hole of Facebook.

Many of my friends are Air traffic Controllers that I have met through my active days of working through NATCA. Some of my ATC friends I haven't actually met but we share many mutual friends and a common career.

And there are a great many friends that I have met through ministry activities, camps, preaching, conferences, etc. I have some friends that are friends at the recommendation of a mutual friend. We've never actually met and yet we are "friends" just the same.

With so many friends from so many sources, I was wondering...are there rules for what is acceptable when soliciting friends or (perhaps more importantly) when accepting or ignoring friendship requests?

For example:
I never solicit friendships from kids.  I don't even solicit friendships from the youth students that I teach. I get requests from kids that have been to camp or VBS or some other church function.  I generally accept these requests but don't usually subscribe to their updates.
As a general rule, I don't solicit friendships from women. I have women friends--family, classmates, churches, etc. Some of the blog friends are women. And I'm sure that some of them did receive a friend request from me, but not too many. Like I said, "As a general rule..."

So, what about you?
Any rules that you follow for friending or un-friending?
What about rules for commenting or subscribing to a friends status updates?
Any rules on messaging/chatting, etc.?

I would love to hear your feedback.

John <><