I can’t be your [Facebook] friend, Robert Scoble!

Posted by Daniel Stout on Tue 26 Jun 2007 at 7:06 AM

Recently tech blogger Robert Scoble announced that he was on Facebook. I’ve read Robert’s blog for a long time and commented once in a while. Maybe even a couple of times he’s linked back here. Anyway, I’ve been on Facebook for a while, so I added Mr. Scoble to my friends. The one of many nice things about Facebook is that it’s built around real human networks – such as where you went to school, where you live, and who you work for (although danah boyd has some thoughts on that). Robert was outside of that realm, but I thought it might be interesting.

Mr. Scoble accepted my invitiation, and I got a chance to peek at his profile. Most of the usual stuff, but I did notice that he was adding friends at a superstar rate.

The News Feed is a great feature – it lets you know what your friends are up to in a Facebook sort of way. Most of my friends though aren’t terribly geeky and don’t “live online.” They have updates maybe once or twice a day. Robert is an Internet star, and rightly so, but his gravitational pull in the social networking world is too strong. After adding Robert as a friend, I found my News Feed littered with the announcements of the dozens of new friends Robert had added that day and his many activites. It was becoming tough if not impossible to sort out what my real friends and acquaintances were up to.

And that, Robert, is why I can’t be your Facebook friend. Your supermassive black hole was sucking all the light from my galaxy.

Tags: facebook · news feed · robert scoble

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