Read more in Wall Street Journal writer Julia Angwin’s article How Facebook Is Making Friending Obsolete. You know, the common advice is that one should be careful what you post on FB and other social networking sites (and blogs.) You never know who is reading it, even among your friends.  If your data is now discoverable via search engine, it’s even more out there.

After a few days of thinking and venting, I’ve put the situation into context, and realize some people never changed, but remembered that I did. Somewhere along the way, I gained a life, a love, a family, and multitude of good friends that I am deeply grateful for their support.

On the flipside, I’ve had enough of people’s bullshit. People are either your friends, acquaintances, or people I don’t need in my life. On Facebook, I’ve made a number of connections with people from my past. Some have certainly been worth it, but others…. well, I guess that ‘something’ isn’t there anymore. I’m specifically talking about anybody I’ve said “Hi!” towards, in order to catch up via wall post or personal message. You know, if you can’t bother to reply back or, uh, respond, to hell with you. I’m not here to accumulate friends like Tila Tequila.

So, I began the great “unfriending” of 2009. Last week, I started with one college-era person from my past (this goes back to the beginning of this post), and unfriended a slew of people tonight. I wrote to a few additional people who are on the fence.  Maybe there were too busy the last time, so I’ll give them a second chance. Hey old best friend, I don’t want to be the only one of us who wants to catch up after all these years over a beer.  If it’s not that important to you, it sure as hell ain’t important to me either.

In the 5 mins I’ve tried it out, it looks better, but my Friends list is taking a LONG time to refresh.  A nice new feature that I noticed is that now you can comment on a particular friend’s status directly from the Status Updates screen.   Also, a click to your buddy’s profile picture shows you their wall within the application itself, and you can view and scroll through photos directly within the app. 

Features that have been long overdue, my friends. Long overdue.