> Unfriending (or hiding/muting/whatever while still actively using Facebook) is much more likely to be taken as an affront by your long-time Facebook friends than simply stopping using FB much.
I've muted hundreds of people in my friends list, and they are none-the-wiser.
Maybe the list shouldn't be called 'friends' anymore? That list is bigger than my list of Outlook + GMail contacts.
As a prime example for a very different use of social networks: Can you explain to me how adding these people to your account (friends, acquaintances, whatever you name the list) adds, especially if they are muted and don't show up in your feed of social stuff (tm) anyway? Fascinating.
Based on what I've seen, refusing to add someone can be seen as a social snub in many circles. Simply adding and muting someone avoids a lot of social hassle of people wanting to know why you refused to add them when you did add some other person.
This is one of the things Google+ got relatively right: Perceived "friendship" are not in any way symmetric. Even close friends will often have different ideas about the depth and importance of their relationship. Facebook has tried very hard to ignore that.
Most people I know have had a facebook account through high school and university. You meet a lot of people in that process. A few years ago adding everyone you vaguely knew was fairly vogue, and so friend lists build up.
I'd say that most people I know just leaving university have around 500-600 friends. Younger people who got facebook earlier in high school tend to have more. It takes a lot more effort to remove friends than it does to add them, and so they build up.
friends used in the facebook sense. I certainly wouldn't consider most of my facebook contacts to be more than acquaintances.
I drove from Alaska to Argentina for 2 years and blogged the whole time, and I visited the "Magic Bus" of Chris McCandless Fame. [1]
Because of both of those, I get about 10 friend requests in Facebook a week. I accept them all in hopes of driving my traffic to my websites. So you are correct - these are not "friends" in the strict sense of the word.
I've muted hundreds of people in my friends list, and they are none-the-wiser.