Burger King ran a promotion this month called “Whopper Sacrifice,” in which a free burger was offered to anyone who deleted 10 friends on Facebook. When Burger King started sending notifications to castoffs letting them know they’d been dumped for a tenth of a whopper, Facebook suspended the campaign. All this got me thinking: what else besides the lure of free fast food makes people un-friend someone? And how do people decide whom to friend in the first place? In an article in the Times this week, a recent graduate of Harvard (where Facebook got its start) advised “culling your friend list once a year to remove total strangers and other hangers-on. Keeping your numbers down gives you more leeway to be selective about whom you approve in the first place,” he said. Keep reading »
