Do You Know the Facebook Rules for Adding Friends?
If you have been involved in attraction marketing and social media marketing, you have probably had occasion to wonder about the Facebook rules for adding Friends.
Especially if you have heard of the Facebook Slap!
There have been reports of Facebook completely suspending accounts at will, but recently a new observation has taken place, their suspension of friend invite privileges!
And it’s not as if there’s been an explicit set of guidelines given;
Where Are the Facebook Rules for Adding Friends?!
The popular method for connecting with people in your niche on Facebook is to join groups, or ‘Like’ fan pages, and then make friends with people who are either in the group, fans of that page, or friends of your friends.
The problem can be that if you are too aggressive, Facebook might punish you by suspending your account indefinitely, and just as of recently, temporarily disabling your ability to invite friends at all!
Facebook is concerned about spam (as well they probably should be, how many people have you accepted friendships from who immediately post their spam on your wall?), and so these new rules might be a set of experiments to try and improve their overall user experience.
While it is important to remember that we do not own Facebook, and they can make any rules they choose, they do seem to change them frequently, and so if we want to maintain our accounts in good standing, we’ll need to stay apprised of any updates. For example, the Facebook rules for adding friends has recently changed and could affect you.
While over a year ago it was possible to add dozens of friends in a day, the limit was reduced to somewhere around 20 to 25 before you were flagged, but now it seems it might be somewhere around 5 per day!
And it goes beyond just this simple limitation …
The Facebook Rules for Adding Friends are Changing
Facebook has been implementing some new rules regarding the invitation of Friends, and this includes shutting down your ability to invite friends if it deems that you are ‘targeting’ someone you do not already know!
What is added to the equation now is that Facebook is considering the ratio of how many friends that you invite to how many accept your invitation.
If you have too many friend requests outstanding that have not been accepted, then Facebook will assume that you to not know the person you are inviting and are breaking the rules.
If this happens then you will be unable to invite friends for an undetermined period of time.
While it is unclear what the critical ratio is (of accepted to unaccepted invites), one does have to be careful.
And if you get any kind of warning, stop any activity immediately! Even if you don’t feel you were doing anything wrong.
There is also another rule that Facebook seems to be using and that is that you might be prevented from requesting friendships with people when you have no friends in common.
Avoiding the Facebook Rules for Adding Friends that Trip You Up
First of all, if you have been doing your social media marketing correctly, you will not even have to make very many friend invites. The Facebook Rules for adding friends won’t matter!
I have plenty of friend requests to respond to, so that I do not need to go in search of them. Isn’t that what you want, for people to come to you?
And when you make friend requests, do you even take the time to drop a personal note? There IS an option in the invite window but I find that most people who connect with me never include a note!
I can tell you this, the ones that do get accepted immediately. The ones who do not go on a ‘wait until I have time to check them out later’ list, and it is usually well into a week or more before I get around to accepting them.
One thing to do is to make contact with the person BEFORE you invite them to become friends, and introduce yourself, let them know why you are contacting them, and ask if it would be ok to connect as friends. Or just include that personal note in your friend request!
Even in this case, it might be good to have had some interaction before hand, at least in public groups or on some wall discussion if not some other avenue of networking. You can see by the lists of preexisting Facebook rules for Friend invites below that even messaging people you do not know should be done carefully.
The list below is what will have you tagged as possibly being abusive. These are NOT new rules. But Facebook will potentially suspend your account for any of these activities:
- Do not contact people you do not know through unsolicited messages or posts.
- Do not use your personal Facebook account to promote or advertise a product, service or opportunity.
- Do not repeatedly share web addresses (URLs) at a fast rate though the Wall, Inbox and Chat features.
- Do not use the site to contact strangers through Inbox messages or friend requests.
There are even actions that if done repeatedly within a short period of time will have you flagged:
- sending messages through Inbox
- sending friend requests
- posting on Walls
- posting to discussion boards
- creating Groups
- using the Poke feature
- using the Search feature
Making the Facebook Rules for Adding Friends Work in Your Favor
There are ways to make the Facebook rules for adding friends work for you, because they actually do emphasize the importance of building relationships.
Make friends by first being consistently and persistently active in groups for your target market, and interacting with people on your friends list. Actually becoming acquainted first will work well in your favor in the future!
If you continually add value to the community, you’ll find that you will receive far more friend requests than you have to make!
Some things to do to stay within the Facebook Rules on Friend invites are
- Don’t send friend requests DAILY… Send a few per week.
- Don’t send the same message with the same link a number of times per day. Beware of link spamming!
- Create relationships with individuals based on common ground, and common goals
- Provide value in their groups and on their profiles… have conversations with these individuals
Hopefully this will help you to prevent any undesirable consequences for disobeying the Facebook rules for adding friends!
Hi again Vicki,
Thanks for this write up… I wasn’t aware of the Facebook Slap!
I have been trying to increase my following with only those that I have friends in common from the Unified Tribe. I have been sending friend invites stating we have friends in common and I like to connect with Like-Minded people. I have been doing this a little more that I have been actually connecting with the people… it sounds like I need to change that.
Hopefully I read your article in time to make a change for the better!
Thanks again… always a pleasure reading your content!
John Engle
John Engle´s last [type] ..A Must Have SEO WordPress Plugin to Help Skyrocket You to the Top of the Google Ladder!
Thanks John!
It sounds like you are already on the right track, having had contact (like through TUT) or at least including a note in your request. I’m actually surprised at how many requests I get with no note at all, when I normally include one if I make a request.
I’m sure you won’t have a problem with your account!
Wishing You Wonderful Success,
Hi Vicki
I have noticed some of the incidents you mentioned
on my account and I am anything but aggressive on facebook!
I guess Facebook is at heart still a ‘social’ site and marketers
are now being ‘encouraged’ to use the facilities geared towards
business if they intend to use facebook for marketing purposes.
great work Vicki thanks for heads up.
Antonio Licchelli
Antonio Licchelli´s last [type] ..1 Super Powerful Traffic Secret
Hi Antonio!
Yes I was astonished to get a message from Facebook that ‘it appears that you do not know this person’ when I made a friend request (something I rarely even do at all anymore!) of someone I was doing business with already! Well, the next day I tried and all went well so I think it was a hiccup on Facebook’s part. Anyway, they are a social site after all, and I appreciate what they are trying to do. So many marketers come online thinking they can just target everyone with their spam, so maybe this will cut down on that!
Wishing You Brilliant Success!
Hey Vicki
Thanks for reminding us all of these important points about networking on Facebook.
I have to say that I sometimes find their over the top standards a bit much when it comes to socialising like this. I understand why they have their rules and policies in place, and I know that we ALL hate spammers, but I think it can really border on killing the whole social networking experience. I mean lets face it, there is currently no competition for Facebook, they can make up what ever rules they want to and we HAVE to stick by them, because if we don’t then we have nowhere else to go right.
Being the leader they are in the SM world, I think Facebook are really trying to mold the Social Media marketplace and really determine and shape us and our experiences by how THEY determine it should be. In some cases that is a good thing with some awesome changes they are bringing in, but when they have no competition to rival them it can be hard for us as. I also think THEY are becoming a little too invasive on some level in determining how we should be socialising with each other! But what can we do… they run the show
There are a couple of great posts about FB on TechCrunch at the moment about them suing people for ridiculous reasons…. such as having the word “book” in their domain or business name… see what I mean
Thanks for the great reminder
cheers
Nat
Nat´s last [type] ..KeywordLuv and Do Follow How I’m Rewarding Commentators On My Blog
Hi Nat!
Yes you are right, with their status they can do whatever they choose and we’ll have to play by their rules! But it might make people more aware of the value in relationship building rather than just numbers (we’re more than just a number after all!) So for example, if you include a note introducing yourself and why you are connecting with someone (like “I saw your post and really liked what you had to say” or “we’re both part of the same FB group” or something), then the odds of that person accepting your request goes way up.
Anyway, I had not heard about their suing people for having ‘book’ in their domain name, geez, ‘book’? Really?! Ha!
Oh well, we can stay out of that one thank goodness!
Wishing You Terrific Success,
Great post for sure. I have plenty of people adding me as well but facebook is really wanting you to know the person you add. So if you do requests and people click ignore then facebook looks at that as they didn’t know you.
So do what ever you can to not be ignored if you do friend requests!
Great advice…
Mike
Mike Hobbs´s last [type] ..Drop Cards Do these little 100 bill drop cards REALLY work
Absolutely Mike!
And if you can be the recipient of more requests than you make then you’ll always be ahead, at least I would think that FB might even count that statistic as well! Just go out and provide value and be a friend getting to know people before you make requests, and I believe you’ll see them coming in!
Wishing You Every Success!
I was facebook slapped. The thing is, I rarely friend request people unless I personally know them. I do however get many requests to be added as a friend because I am a photographer. All I know is Myspace never “slapped” me! LOL! Thanks for all the info!
Sincerely,
Heather
Oh Heather! I’m sorry to hear that – it’s such a shame that Facebook has to be so flaky sometimes. Were you just denied the ability to request friend for a while or was your account suspended?
Wishing You Fabulous Success,
Great Info Vicki. Question. If you have a pending friend request and they do not accept you, if you go back and remove the request, does that benefit you for facebook purposes?
Hi Phil!
Yes I do believe that you will benefit from removing a friend request from someone that does not accept you, since it seems they look at your ratio of outstanding friend requests as an indicator of whether or not to suspend your requests. I’m not sure how you would do that however, I haven’t tried but I hope that Facebook would give you a way to retract invitations!
Thanks for stopping by!
Wishing You Tremendous Success,
Yes, you can cancel a friend request. You just click on the request thing, then scroll down to where it says cancel request. I just got a message from Facebook that apparently I had been sending requests to people I do not know personally, “which is not allowed on facebook.” I’ve done this many times in the several years I’ve been on Facebook, and never had a problem. In fact, I’ve made a few of my very best friends by sending random friend requests. Didn’t know the people at all at first, sent them a requests, and now I’m as close to them as brothers or sisters. I have found distant cousins on FB I did not know personally but got to know them by sending a friend request. I always thought one of the purposes of FB was to make new friends and new connections, and that’s how I’ve used it, but how can you do that if you’re only allowed to send requests to people you already know personally. In reality, everyone I know personally who has a facebook is already my friend on there. At least the people I WANT to be on there. A few, I don’t want on my friends.
Isn’t it enough that a recipient of a friend request has the option of blocking, deleting, or not responding? I don’t see the purpose of fb’s friend request rule unless they are trying to do some kind of social analysis for their gain.
If this is somehow a problem, then why does fb keep suggesting friends.
There is no understanding the logic of FB sometimes that’s for sure!
Thank you for a great Post! It is very helpful when you are trying to increase Facebook fans.
There are some pretty sneaky people on Facebook. Some will make an “Add Me” request on facebook friend-finding pages. Be weary of that. They could block you when you attempt to add them – One sent back an IM stating “do I NO you” When a person does something like that don’t reply! If a person gets blocked frequently enough or deliberately denied requests an account will also obviously get suspended or blocked. Thus far it has only been females found to be playing those stupid games.
Some good points here, but I have certainly seen more than just females playing silly games online! I doubt it’s but a perception, and we’re all subject to the spammers in any number and gender!
Thank you Vicki, this is VERY useful information
can’t people just unfriend you or not accept you? why does facebook suspend?
i got suspended for 2 days apparently from someone facebook suggested i might know. yes i know the person but what i dont know is that he may not want to become a facebook contact. his name keeps popping up on facebooks suggested people so i clicked him again then got suspended for 7 days then when i tried to check if it was the one causing the problem, bang! facebook suspended me again for 14 days! i don’t understand why they suggest friends that seem to become a hidden trap. i’ve read all the community standards and am sure i didn’t violate any except if that someone i know secretly doesn’t want to be a friend anymore and reported me as harrasing. but how do we know that? i teach art and photography over a wide area covering many philippine islands and i’m confused on how i’m going to build a network that just keeps on trapping us from doing such?
That’s too bad Joel, I really don’t understand FB sometimes – they suggest people that have even reached their friends limit! Anyway, I quit taking FB suggestions a long time back, and just stick to those I have interacted with. Then after you are more established with your online social presence you’ll find more and more people request your friendship instead of the other way around!
I have been on facebook for quite a few years now, I even play some of the social games on here where you need to add friends to get a stronger team, thus I am sticking my neck out? Sorry but when I played before and if others turned me down well so be it, now I was hit with a 7 day ban on the first shot, had less than 24 hours of freedom where I did not send any friend requests and poof got hit with a 14 day ban, and cannot chat on group chats involved with the game as I am now also branded as a spammer.
I am a very honest person and I can honestly say that criminals have more rights when doing wrong than we do on facebook, the criminal gets a chance to speak his or her mind and is innocent until proven guilty, whereas on facebook you are not allowed to speak your mind, you are guilty and must wait till the ban period is over as phone calls to facebook gets you no where.
Being branded as a spammer is very wrong as I have done nothing to deserve this, plus being branded as a spammer is defamation of character and is against the law
I WAS UNAWARE OF THE FACEBOOK RULES. IF YOU CAN SEE MY ACCOUNT? YOU WILL NOTICE I ONLY REQUEST PEOPLE WITH AROUND 40+ FRIENDS IN COMMON TO BE MY FRIEND AN MOST OF MY FRIENDS AN THEIR FRIENDS ARE IN AA OR N/A –I REALLY DON’T SEE THE PROBLEM EXCEPT THAT I MAY HAVE BEEN REQUESTING TO MANY TO FAST . I HAVE 18 YRS. CLEAN AN SOBER , AN WAS ONLY TRYING TO ENLARGE MY SUPPORT GROUP AN ALSO GIVE BACK THE BLESSINGS THAT WERE SO FREELY GIVEN TO ME??–SORRY I WILL TRY AN BE LESS EAGER–LOL