Facebook

See also my page on network-building.

My Facebook profile is vipulnaik.r.

I joined Facebook in 2008, but didn’t use it much for the first few years. My Facebook use started increasing around 2011, and has since been growing exponentially. As of March 2015, I have a little over 1800 Facebook friends.

My life trajectory has led to my having an outsized online presence relative to my real-life presence, and most of my best friendships in the last few years have been formed online, through Facebook, email, and mutual friend introductions. Some of these have subsequently been consummated in person, and some have even led to close in-person interaction, but most continue to be online due to limitations imposed by geographical distance and the time/money costs of travel.

Of my Facebook-first friendships, I’d estimate that about 75% have been based on requests that I sent, and the remaining 25% have been based on requests sent by other people. Some of the main sources of friends I’ve received:

  • Explicit introduction by a mutual friend.
  • Blind friend request based on having heard of the other person outside of Facebook.
  • Blind friend request based on a large number of mutual friends.
  • Friend request based on interaction in a Facebook group or comment thread on a mutual friend’s post (or a public post of my own).
  • Blind friend request based on seeing the other person on Facebook but no direct interaction so far. Some of the people thus friended have no mutual friends with me. In a few cases, I have needed to pay Facebook $1 to be able to send the message. I’ve made at least a few really good friends through such paid messages, and in almost no case has such a request been rejected.

I use Facebook extensively to seek other people’s thoughts and opinions on a variety of issues. Given my extensive use of Facebook, I have come up with some efficiency hacks to maximize the value per unit time spent on Facebook. I’ve included some relevant links and discussions below:

Basic information