When we have stopped speaking in person and when, if called by a job reference, I would be uncomfortable giving my endorsement, I unfriend someone.

If Facebook works like Flickr, the system won't send them a message saying you un-friended them, right? So they won't even notice unless they go to the trouble of looking it up. And if they look it up, that's kinda petty and creepy and justifies your decision.

So yeah, go for it. (I've done this on Flickr, but so far only with people I didn't know in person so the dynamic is probably a little different.)

You can un-friend me, SassHat, but I'll still haunt your dreams.

BP - this person will definitely notice, as they don't have a huge amount of people on there and I tend to post updates fairly frequently. I'm not even certain she would care, my point is I don't want to seem jerky, especially to our mutual friends.

Mullacc - is this why I've been having nightmares about turtles?

My rule is: If I'm no longer speaking to a former friend, and don't want to hear about their lives, then I unfriend them.

If I still might want to keep track of them at some point in the future or might even see myself wanting to look at their page in the future, I don't unfriend them.

Facebook has a "block" option, which will keep the other person from seeing anything you do - it will basically look like you deleted your facebook. Assuming they don't regularly get on other peoples' facebooks, you should be fine.

If the issue is "THEY SHOW UP ON NEWSFEED ALL THE TIME" you can also alter your newsfeed settings such that it won't show you anything of theirs unless there's nothing else to show you (it's under "preferences" when you're looking at the feed). That might also be a solution.

Or you could just unfriend them, but you have to live with the possibility they might try to add you back. That happened with an ex of mine.

dismas, this is a good point. I think I may just change my newsfeed options. This person actually does sometimes see facebook from other people's logins (her bf's). I think I will just change the newsfeed options and then if she's seeing too much of me she can just deal with it.

Also - interesting side note - a dude I was seeing last year who I still talk to actually alerted me to the fact that my profile changed back to "public" when I switched networks over the summer. Doh! And I had no idea until he mentioned something he had no other way of knowing about.

dismas, this is a good point. I think I may just change my newsfeed options. This person actually does sometimes see facebook from other people's logins (her bf's). I think I will just change the newsfeed options and then if she's seeing too much of me she can just deal with it.

Also - interesting side note - a dude I was seeing last year who I still talk to actually alerted me to the fact that my profile changed back to "public" when I switched networks over the summer. Doh! And I had no idea until he mentioned something he had no other way of knowing about (he is not on my friends list).

Oh noes doubles!

If any of you guys want me to friend you, point me in the right direction and holla.

(I just joined the Metachat group too. I'm Connie on Facebook.)

I just learned of friends' pending divorce via facebook. "so and so, and so and so have ended their relationship" so it wouldn't shock me if facebook then announced to all your mutual friends "sasshat and nutball are no longer friends" or something