Unimportant posts - the top reason for Facebook unfriending
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 10 November 2010, 13:46 IST
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Bangalore: The number-one reason for Facebook unfriending is frequent and unimportant posts while the second reason is posting about polarizing topics like religion and politics, reveals a study by a University of Colorado Denver Business School student. He has revealed the top reasons for Facebook unfriending, who is unfriended and how they react to being unfriended. "Researchers spend a lot of time examining how people form friendships online but little is known on how those relationships end," said Christopher Sibona, a PhD student in the Computer Science and Information Systems program whose research will be published in January by the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. "Perhaps this will help us develop a theory of the entire cycle of friending and unfriending," he added. He surveyed more than 1,500 Facebook users on Twitter for his study. Commenting on the top two reasons, he said, "The 100th post about your favorite band is no longer interesting. They say not to talk about religion or politics at office parties and the same thing is true online." Inappropriate posts, such as crude or racist comments, were the third reason for being unfriended. The study showed 57 percent of those surveyed unfriended for online reasons, while 26.9 percent did so for offline behavior. While some respondents reported being deeply hurt at being unfriended, others were more amused than traumatized. "There are a wide variety of reactions depending on who did the unfriending and why," he said. A recent AOL study showed 30 percent of teenagers wanted to unfriend their own parents. Given the public nature of Facebook profiles, Sibona urged users to exercise caution in their posting behaviors citing a 2010 survey showing that 54.6 percent of recruiters used the site to find or investigate job candidates. The Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook has become a part of the popular culture that in 2009, unfriend was named word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, which defined it as "to remove someone as a `friend' from a social networking site such as Facebook."

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