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Facebook needs a better way to unfriend people

By on May 24, 2010

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been trying to gain some kind of
control over my Facebook account, meaning I have two distinct pages,
one for family only, and one that is more public that I don’t really
worry about. The problem was moving people between both pages, and the
inability to mass delete people off my public profile that were not
contributing to the conversation.

The biggest problem was doing the mass delete of people, which was
time consuming and follow the threads throughout the entire system.
Because friends can share your information with their other friends,
all the cross connect linkages between friends of friends also needed
to be deleted which was labor intensive.

One of the most important things that a social network could
install is a simple delete button, or a way to cascade delete a group
of people. While Facebook lists or groups is one way of approaching the
ability to keep information from one group of people to another group
of people, the delete button would be a more impressive feature. Many
folks will not go through and try to make custom permissions on each
member that they have friended on the system. Since I have some 700
friends on my public profile, that would be a problematic exercise that
would have taken more than the 10 hours it spent to delete people and
move them over to a different profile.

While Facebook is still all wrapped up in privacy, I think that the
simple addition of a delete key next to the person you want removed
from your profile would be a brilliant addition. It would be also a
good feature to cascade delete people based on a common thread, if they
are all from the same company, or same group or list. If we want to
empower people on Facebook, a simple delete button could be a powerful
tool.

(Cross-posted @ IT Toolbox )

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Posted in | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Responses

Dan Morrill works in Interactive Media and Cloud delivery systems for Comics Forge as the COO. He has been blogging since 2003 covering different emerging technologies, management and information security. Dan works as a founding member of a number of startups, including Startup Academy International and Dead Tree Comics. His interests are in intellectual property protection, piracy, and information security as it applies to cloud computing. He also has a deep interest in media, mobile computing, and education.. His personal blog is here,  his other pro-blog is here .

4 responses to “Facebook needs a better way to unfriend people”

  1. ZXT
    ZXT May 26, 2010 at 2:06 am |

    Definitely agree. A delete button will make our life easier 🙂

  2. Mr. Bill
    Mr. Bill June 12, 2010 at 4:20 am |

    Go into your account settings, click on Edit Friends, then on that page, on the left, click on Friends again. A list will appear with an X button on the right. Delete away! I just found it and am snapping them off like bugs…I got hooked on adding for a while myself, then I was like sheesh!

  3. Steve Poland
    Steve Poland December 20, 2010 at 2:40 pm |

    just found this in facebook:

    http://www.facebook.com/friends/edit/

  4. jeric
    jeric February 28, 2011 at 4:18 pm |

    your wrong Mr Bill
    deleting them that way only removes them from the group they are in