The Facebook Friendship Challenge

Some have suggested that friend requests on social networking sites can become intrusive or tiresome, but here at Times Online we embrace all the friends we can get. Competitively.

Dan Harris, deputy editor, special projects:

Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. No it isn’t. It’s a barefaced popularity contest. And it's a contest that I'm currently winning against my esteemed colleague and Times Online Driving editor, Arion McNicoll.

We call it the Facebook Challenge, and there is one rule: make as many friends as possible. At the time of writing, I have 137 'friends'. Arion has 135. By the time you read this, Arion could be back in the lead again.

I will do everything in my power to ensure that this doesn’t happen. When I first joined Facebook a few months ago I was exceptionally selective when searching for and accepting friends. Two months on I have become slightly more, um, cavalier when deciding who should be allowed to enter my network of friends. I have no shame.

"Who’s she and how do you know her?"

"Oh, she’s my father’s colleague’s cousin’s neighbour’s half-sister’s milkman’s vet. She’ll do."

Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but I can’t promise that I won’t be forced to employ such extreme tactics in future. And if anyone out there wants to be my friend, click here. You can be sure that I won’t reject you.

Arion McNicoll, Driving editor:

This competition sucks. I always thought of myself as a popular kind of chap with a fairly extensive social network. Until, that is, I joined Facebook, a world where friendship is unequivocally quantifiable. I have, it seems, 135 friends in the entire world, and I can see no way to lift my tally, which is a bitter disappointment as for the first time since I ran for Yellow House Vice-Captain at high school I am locked in a popularity contest where quantity is all.

My rival is on 137 friends, which is no doubt due to the laxity of his standards when it comes to accepting Facebook friendship and the amount of time he is putting into the competition, and nothing at all to do with his being a significantly nicer person than I am.

In the interest of delivering a humiliating defeat I have resolved therefore to relax my Facebook standards, which may be hard considering that already, one of my Facebook friends is a girl I danced with once.

Having recently become a member of the AAA Elite Facebook Poke Army, I still have one ace up my sleeve. If I slip too far behind I will resort to violent revenge and unleash a torrent of anonymous pokes upon my nemesis. Although things being as they are, this plan could well backfire on me as the two thousand odd members of the Elite Poke Army turn out to be allied with Dan and give me what I well deserve.

Comments

[Agent Zero]

Try using the link to your public profile in your email footer or Instant Messages. This will give non-Facebook users a better reason to join and add you than the "join facebook" invite emails.
http://facelessmedia.com/corporation/?p=63

You can also work out the deeplink to your full profile, accessible only to facebook users, and put it somewhere that lots of webusers will find. Like this blog.

The true narcissists will find the friend adder bot coders who turned myspace into a marketing lead zone for music are producing similar for Facebook. $20 for 200 friends? Bargain

[Adam Webb]

What on earth are you on about??? Everyone knows that myspace is a popularity contest.. Facebook friends should only be real friends. I arrange many parties on facebook and events, and they all work perfectly. I wouldn't dream of just adding people, I treat my facebook as I do my mobile phone. What is the point of just adding anyone??? I have 140 friends and they are all people I know and I speak with all of them, if there is someone who I don't know i will not add them unless there is good reason too. Please don't publish embarrassing articles like this..

[MM]

Facebook is NOT a popularity contest, MySpace IS. The point of having a Facebook account is to keep in touch with friends, old and new.
Damn those 13 year olds who have decided to abandon MySpace and hijack Facebook, adding everyone in sight. Lol.

[JJ]

I just want to beat my girlfriend to 100 first and then I'll be happy. I'm on 94, she's on 96... so I may have to resort to a few tenuous adds and people I don't really want to be associated with...