To think peoples birthdays are a good time to audit their interaction with me on FB?

[MammaTJ]

I need to reduce the 800 + 'friends' I have but do not necessarily know easily who I keep in touch with and who I do not.

I look at people when it is their birthday and delete them then if we have had no interaction between birthdays.

Is this wrong? Some friends (real life ones) seem to keep adding and adding but I cannot manage over 800.

Just do what the heck you want on your own FB, I don't get having to announce your plans and invite discussion

I mean that in a loving way.

I've just had a prune of my friends list - some of my old school friends were on there because I genuinely wanted to know what they had been up to in the last 20 years, but I'm less interested in ongoing commentary on their lives now.

I don't post much myself so it doesn't matter from the personal data perspective whether I have 8 or 8000 FB friends

I'd like to prune my list of forty-seven by about three but how do I do it, please?

I don't even know 800 people. I'm only 'friends' with people I was friends with at school or Uni or who I've been friends with at some point / am friends with now. I don't have randoms.

On radio 4 the other day there was a woman calling each of her see 365 Facebook friends on the phone - one a day for a year. Thought that was a nice idea.

chesterberry's birthday test is a very odd and childish one. Not since I was a teenager have I really cared who knew when my birthday was, expect my parents and husband! I'd never notice when friends' birthdays are and if someone pulled a similarly childish trick, I'd assume that I'd perhaps just got it wrong and wish them happy birthday to be nice. I think I'd have been rather glad to have been deleted by chesterberry for such an imagined insult!

As for keeping my FB friends number down, my general rule is "Would I cross the road to speak to you?" so that number is about 200.

I don't think I would ever do a fake birthday test. I struggle to know which one of the couple has the birthday on shared profiles, so certainly do not expect everyone to know when mine is.

The shared profiles are good friends, where I am actually friends with both of them. I still don't know their birthdays.

I have made friends through playing scrabble on there, through other games. I have FB friends all over the world and will probably never meet a lot of them. I still value their friendship though. There are just a few who never bother or interact. It is not called social networking for nothing. If people are not going to be social, there is little point.

I also have friends who I met on here, some who I met in support groups.

I have met up with one friend I met on here and we are FB friends. There is another who lives in the same county that I will get around to meeting soonish.

If you have to do this to decide which of your 800 friends really is your friend, I do question just how many are friends at all!!!

It should be a bit of a no brainer.

The FB test is simply this:

If they were in town, would I go for a pint (or coffee or whatever) with them.