How to wean users to add as friends when you just need to subscribe

    One of Facebook's problems is the flow of adding friends from completely strangers. This can even strain ordinary users, let alone celebrities - thousands of people consider it their duty to add them as friends.



    Perhaps the fact is that many facebook users switched there from LJ, where the concepts of “subscriber” and “friend” were not separated. Or maybe the reason is even deeper - not all people are ready to simply subscribe to someone interesting, reciprocity is just as important to them ("Oh, you don’t read me, so I won’t read you either!"). Well, the vanity factor, of course, when it comes to famous people.

    In any case, this is wrong. There are familiar people, friends, and there are sources of information and fans. The separation of the statuses “friend” and “subscriber” is absolutely correct, it remains only to make them work. The only question is how to instill this culture in people, preferably without fascism (i.e., deliberately complicating the procedure and forcing unnecessary actions). And recently it dawned on me how to solve it literally without changing anything.

    Because the root of the problem outlined above lies in the psychological plane (people feel humiliated if they don’t get reciprocity), then the solution should be the same: simply rename the button “Add to friends” to “Ask friends”.



    Firstly, the current name of the button is simply incorrect: by clicking “Add as friend” the user does not actually do this, but only sends a request (and this may also be the reason for frequent additions from strangers - they simply don’t understand that the action they perform has a continuation on the opposite side).

    Changing the name of the button, we bring the form in accordance with the content. And we solve the problem with users who perceive the issues of “frending” too painfully: most likely, they will simply stop pressing the “Ask friends” button for nothing, because they don’t want to be in the position of “asking.”

    Of course, this is a theory, and only employees of the Russian office of facebook can check it. But I hope that my proposal will be heard, because one small inscription on the button can save thousands of hours to users in total, freeing them from the need to deal with lists of strangers. Network hygiene is important!

    PS I’m sure this solution will come in handy for other services that have the concept of “friendship” and “subscription”. Russian is rich and allows a lot.

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