Here’s the harsh truth.

I’m super picky who I ‘friend’ on Facebook.

This is mostly because I don’t use my Facebook profile for business. My posts are often quite personal. Not as in bare my deepest pains and airing of dirty laundry, just more everyday stuff but still, rarely business. I have a page for that, am involved with several groups and am looking to creating more groups in the near future too. Definitely not anti-social.

It’s really a reflection of how I live. By nature, it takes time for me to make friends. In my mind, friends are people who don’t mind my quirkiness and won’t judge me for being their polar opposite. When business acquaintances, people you just met, and those you don’t know well, sends a friend request, there’s no way to tell if they’d be offended by that or take it in stride.

To accept or not to accept? That’s the question for the modern day.

Thankfully, Facebook does have a way for you to take care of that problem. Put them on the Restricted list.

When you add someone to the restricted list, they can only see your public posts and/or pictures or when you tag them.

For a more detailed explanation, here’s what Facebook says about it.

The other way – which is what I’ve been doing for a long time is to put people in your own lists. This way, when I share something that I know will not go well with one group, I’ll exclude them.  If I know something will be very well received among this other group of people, I’ll just select that list to share with. If you see the screenshot above, I have a list named “Professional”. I put all business acquaintances there.

These two methods are great for people like:

• The guy you met at a conference last weekend
• The lady from the local small business group
• A client whom you are friendly
• A new assistant

Finally, there’s the acquaintances list. This is a sort of a reverse of the restricted list. While they can still see what you post to your friends list, acquaintances posts will rarely show up on your feed. Great for people whom you don’t care for what they share but don’t want to unfriend.

These options are great! However, at the end of the day, self-restraint is still the best. When I enter Facebook, I make myself be aware that I’m entering a public room. If it’s not something I would say aloud to anyone in that room, it’s probably best not to post.