I notice that there are all sorts of people following me on Twitter and Facebook. I don’t think I know them. I only accept friend requests from, or follow, as the case may be, people that I have at least met. I also have been known to accept friend requests from people that share an interest with me. For instance, I accepted a friend request from a ham radio operator in Italy that I had never met before. That is primarily because I could look up his information given his ham radio call sign and verify that he is, in fact, who he says he is.
This is not so straight forward with most of the people I get friend requests from. I don’t mean to be unfriendly, but if I don’t know you or have a common interest with you, I don’t want you stalking me. I know. I have a blog site. I am pretty much “out there” on a bunch of social media sites. I am just trusting my gut to tell me how much sharing that I’m up for.
If you have sent me a friend request and I haven’t responded and you have some reason to be my friend, like you’ve met me or we share an interest or something, go ahead and send another request and tell me about what we have in common in the request. I won’t be mad or anything. I may still decide not to friend you but it doesn’t hurt to ask that second time with more details about why you think we should be friends. But two or three times is probably enough. Give it several months or a year before you try again after three strikes.