Familiar is it? Receiving a request on social sites from a person whose first-name you have hardly heard of is a common scenario these days. If you are also suffering from this syndrome, read on!
In the pre-Facebook era there were social gatherings, not that they aren't prominent today, but in those times that was the only means to get to know people that you now see as 'Friends-of-friends'. And then in the gatherings, you could hardly see any unknown person coming to introduce himself with you. A one off case was always there to prove the "exceptions always exist" hypothesis true. So the only means apart from this left was when a guy was attracted to a girl, or a person wanting to be in contact with another person since the target here was either a big shot or someone who was considered worthy or beneficial enough from a business contact perspective. So it always used to be what we now know as 'Introduction flow'; from a known contact to an unknown one who is already in the first person contact list, group, address-book or circle what ever you call it. Being a female myself I could tell you to believe it did happen like this a few years before. The custom has expanded in to the virtual world now with social sites like Facebook/Google+ etc and professional one like ApnaCircle.com
People have their own idea about how to handle these kind of requests, they have it for the physical gatherings and they have it for the online presence as well. So what happens if your husband's boss or some colleague sends a friend request to you on any of the mentioned platforms? Does rejecting the request sounds rude or unprofessional? It may to some but there would be others who would accept these kind of requests. What it comes down to is how you handle your address-book/contact-group then.
What ever you action plan is will(or ideally should) depend on which kind of platform you are on. So an unknown contact request on a social site should be treated in a manner which will be completely different from the one on a professional portal. More or less you are on a social platform for either your friends or for your family or both (majority is here) and on professional portal for either extending your business clients or being there as a technical person looking to share information and gather some for the areas you like. The purpose, as stated, is clearly different so the handling of your circle or contacts should be different as well. Don't make the mistake of treating both the platforms same, at least as far as your contacts are considered.
Social Platforms
Most of the time what you share on these platforms is pretty private or family stuff. Something that you wouldn't want to be viewed outside of your family and friends group. If you agree with this, then you are sure not to accept any request from anyone who you are not familiar with. I for once happen to be in this group as well. So all my contacts on Facebook are actually people whom I have worked with or are my close friends or is a family!
Google+ allows you to create circles and every post that you share could be easily chosen to be not-shared with some. Not that Facebook lists are left behind here but then I feel the circles are more obvious choice. The UI of post sharing is much more easily handled when it comes to discarding some circles of your shared post.
Facebook, however, has a mechanism in place where if someone does start getting a freaky with sending friend requests to people he/she is not known to; Facebook will block the account for a few days with a warning to start with where it asks you to confirm if you actually know the person you are sending the request to.
Professional Portals
The scenario is different there and most of the time depends on your profile role. So if you are looking for a job you could be friend with some HR or recruiting people you are not familiar with otherwise. Similarly if you are there to sell, then you may be adding contacts people who are interested in your products but personally are not familiar with you.
These portals too have a way of 'introduction' and as well to ascertain that you know the contact one way or another. And if not then they explicitly ask you to mark the relation as you-don't-know-Mr X-yet. We found both these ways on ApnaCircle.com and were impressed with the UI and ease of use of these add-contact flow. Here are the screen-shots for both these procedures. Try it out and we are sure you will love them. We agree there is nothing special and the same you may find on other professional domains but when we first tried it on our profile with ApnaCircle.com, the experience was just smooooth! Although we are still unsure of what ApnaCircle.com does if you send too many request with you-don't-know-Mr X-yet option chosen in the flow. Any ApnaCircle.com person listening, feel free to drop in a comment with details here and we will be happy to update this post with the details.
Our Views
We live in a crazy world and there are numerous fake profiles, just make sure you inquire well about the profile you are going to add! If you are an individual on social platforms like Facebook or G+ then you may want to ignore them in the first impression(debatable yes, and depends on individual to individual basis). Just make sure that instead of ignoring the request, you either accept them or reject them. Ignoring might not be a good idea! Although G+ will disagree as once a person adds you to his/her circle, he/she is sure not to see your updates/posts till you oblige by adding the in your circle.
For professional profiles like ApnaCircle.com, just see the profile of the person who send you the request. Profile details are a good way to know about the person, especially since people now a days provide details/links about their profile on other platforms. You may wish to check them out as well before accepting the request.
We know a few who doesn't care whether they are on social or professional platforms, they will just reject or ignore (preferring the former) the request if it is outside of their known circle. And we sure respect the privacy. Happy Crunching then, and do let us know in case we are wrong in our views, we would be happy to include more details or correct them as the case may be!!
In the pre-Facebook era there were social gatherings, not that they aren't prominent today, but in those times that was the only means to get to know people that you now see as 'Friends-of-friends'. And then in the gatherings, you could hardly see any unknown person coming to introduce himself with you. A one off case was always there to prove the "exceptions always exist" hypothesis true. So the only means apart from this left was when a guy was attracted to a girl, or a person wanting to be in contact with another person since the target here was either a big shot or someone who was considered worthy or beneficial enough from a business contact perspective. So it always used to be what we now know as 'Introduction flow'; from a known contact to an unknown one who is already in the first person contact list, group, address-book or circle what ever you call it. Being a female myself I could tell you to believe it did happen like this a few years before. The custom has expanded in to the virtual world now with social sites like Facebook/Google+ etc and professional one like ApnaCircle.com
People have their own idea about how to handle these kind of requests, they have it for the physical gatherings and they have it for the online presence as well. So what happens if your husband's boss or some colleague sends a friend request to you on any of the mentioned platforms? Does rejecting the request sounds rude or unprofessional? It may to some but there would be others who would accept these kind of requests. What it comes down to is how you handle your address-book/contact-group then.
What ever you action plan is will(or ideally should) depend on which kind of platform you are on. So an unknown contact request on a social site should be treated in a manner which will be completely different from the one on a professional portal. More or less you are on a social platform for either your friends or for your family or both (majority is here) and on professional portal for either extending your business clients or being there as a technical person looking to share information and gather some for the areas you like. The purpose, as stated, is clearly different so the handling of your circle or contacts should be different as well. Don't make the mistake of treating both the platforms same, at least as far as your contacts are considered.
Social Platforms
Most of the time what you share on these platforms is pretty private or family stuff. Something that you wouldn't want to be viewed outside of your family and friends group. If you agree with this, then you are sure not to accept any request from anyone who you are not familiar with. I for once happen to be in this group as well. So all my contacts on Facebook are actually people whom I have worked with or are my close friends or is a family!
Google+ allows you to create circles and every post that you share could be easily chosen to be not-shared with some. Not that Facebook lists are left behind here but then I feel the circles are more obvious choice. The UI of post sharing is much more easily handled when it comes to discarding some circles of your shared post.
Facebook, however, has a mechanism in place where if someone does start getting a freaky with sending friend requests to people he/she is not known to; Facebook will block the account for a few days with a warning to start with where it asks you to confirm if you actually know the person you are sending the request to.
Professional Portals
The scenario is different there and most of the time depends on your profile role. So if you are looking for a job you could be friend with some HR or recruiting people you are not familiar with otherwise. Similarly if you are there to sell, then you may be adding contacts people who are interested in your products but personally are not familiar with you.
These portals too have a way of 'introduction' and as well to ascertain that you know the contact one way or another. And if not then they explicitly ask you to mark the relation as you-don't-know-Mr X-yet. We found both these ways on ApnaCircle.com and were impressed with the UI and ease of use of these add-contact flow. Here are the screen-shots for both these procedures. Try it out and we are sure you will love them. We agree there is nothing special and the same you may find on other professional domains but when we first tried it on our profile with ApnaCircle.com, the experience was just smooooth! Although we are still unsure of what ApnaCircle.com does if you send too many request with you-don't-know-Mr X-yet option chosen in the flow. Any ApnaCircle.com person listening, feel free to drop in a comment with details here and we will be happy to update this post with the details.
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| Friend Request on ApnaCircle.com |
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| Get Introduced to a Contact |
Our Views
We live in a crazy world and there are numerous fake profiles, just make sure you inquire well about the profile you are going to add! If you are an individual on social platforms like Facebook or G+ then you may want to ignore them in the first impression(debatable yes, and depends on individual to individual basis). Just make sure that instead of ignoring the request, you either accept them or reject them. Ignoring might not be a good idea! Although G+ will disagree as once a person adds you to his/her circle, he/she is sure not to see your updates/posts till you oblige by adding the in your circle.
For professional profiles like ApnaCircle.com, just see the profile of the person who send you the request. Profile details are a good way to know about the person, especially since people now a days provide details/links about their profile on other platforms. You may wish to check them out as well before accepting the request.
We know a few who doesn't care whether they are on social or professional platforms, they will just reject or ignore (preferring the former) the request if it is outside of their known circle. And we sure respect the privacy. Happy Crunching then, and do let us know in case we are wrong in our views, we would be happy to include more details or correct them as the case may be!!
common scenario yes, and we are all very much familiar with this. lovely written article this, thanks for putting this with such composure.
ReplyDeleteI am sure to visit ApnaCircle soon to see the features you just mentioned!
We are happy whenever we are able to put a post that benefits our users. Keep visiting for more news, like you already do !!
ReplyDelete