So, a couple of months ago, I was shooting an event and one of the other photographers there told me about a local Photoshop expert (whom I know) who was mad at me because he sent me a friend request on Facebook, and I didn’t friend him, so he felt snubbed. Just what I needed—-another reason for people to be mad at me. ;-)
I let her know that it wasn’t intentional (I honestly never saw his friend request—you’ll see why in a moment), and I told her that I don’t really stay up with my Facebook page at all. In fact, I don’t think I’ve posted there in months—-if I do anything, it’s just to comment on something one of my friends have posted (with all the stuff I do online, I like to keep my Facebook page for just my family and personal friends).
Anyway, I felt bad that he felt slighted, so that night I went back and looked at my pending friend requests, and at that point I had over 1,000 pending friend requests. (Though after some searching, I did find his request and I “friended him”).
So, with all these requests stacking up (and the hurt feeling building up) Brad and I started sending a Facebook direct message out to these pending people to let them know that my Facebook page is really just for my personal friends (and leading them to our public NAPP Facebook page instead), and we were sending out about 30 of these emails a day to get the pending number down to something more manageable.
But then Facebook themselves sent me a warning saying they thought I was spamming people, and they were going to close my account altogether, so after making some decent progress in whittling the number way down (everybody was very kind about it and totally understood), we had to stop doing that, too.
Well, I just checked my Facebook page today and now it’s back up to nearly 1,200 pending requests, so the number of people who are mad at me, (not including sports photographers), is growing.
The reason I’m telling you this is; this week I got an email from a reader asking why I hadn’t approved their Friend request, and that they were kind of hurt, and then they gave me a list of reasons why I should reconsider. Now I feel really bad (and I don’t even know him, but the guilt is racking up now).
So, I guess I just wanted to let everybody whose feelings I might have hurt by not accepting their friend request that (1) I’m really sorry, and (2) it’s totally nothing personal—–I’m just trying to keep my Facebook page just for friends and family (people I would include in my Verizon Friends & Family plan if only the iPhone was on Verizon, which one can only hope will happen someday soon).
Now, that being said, we do now have a NAPP Facebook page and group. These are the pages that all us “Photoshop Guys” use to connect with fellow NAPP members and PhotoshopUser TV viewers and blog readers (and I’m going to try and post some there myself), so I hope you will join us there! (and yes—we will accept your friend request there for sure!).
Anyway, thanks for understanding, and here’s the link.
