The way I look at it, and this is from experience, you never know what will come out of connecting with a stranger. True you may not want to do this blindly. But I can tell you that I have seen it pay off dividends.

For example when I was looking for work, I was receiving facebook friend invites from people I’d not spoken too since high school. Many of them I didn’t interact with even back then. To their credit several of them stepped up and asked me to forward them their resume and helped me look for work.

Just recently we’ve been having get togethers every month and at the last one two of our classmates who had a nasty incident during school (the result of which led to an arrest) made up and cleared the air.

So.. who knows, maybe there is something to be said about getting in touch with strangers.

Now those pokes… that’s a different story!!

I love that Facebook has created a way to keep in touch with long lost friends. I’ve been able to connect with several old high school and college friends who I’d lost track of ( mostly due to lack of email and cell phones 10 years ago ). For that, I really like it.

Then there’s the other side of the coin, like you mentioned. The people who just want to be connected to everyone. Sure it makes you look cool to have 356 ‘friends’, but what’s the point? If you ask to be my friend, and I don’t instantly know who you are, why do we need to reconnect? If the connection was so minor the first time that I can’t remember you, I don’t know why I need to make a second effort. I’d recently piled up 5 requests of people who I barely knew, or couldn’t remember at all. To be “nice”, I allowed them. Going through their profiles, I ended up knowing 2 of them — women who had changed their last name after marriage, and who had vague profile pictures. The other 3 I casually removed from my friends when nobody was looking.

Lets be honest, if we wouldn’t stop and chat if we bumped into each other on the street, do we need to be friends on Facebook?