I hear from people who becomes curious and concerned when they notice that their number of friends on Facebook has dropped without explanation.
What’s going on here? Have they been defriended?
I was on a friend’s profile to send her a message the other day (the send message function is on the upper right of a profile), and just after I sent it, I looked to the left and center of the profile, and noticed that she had defriended me. I felt like a right wally for having just sent her a friendly message. If she doesn’t want to be friends with me, I don’t want to be friends with her.
So defriending can be disconcerting, but much of the time when your number of friends on Facebook has dropped, it’s not because you’ve been defriended. Rather, it’s because someone has chosen to go off-line from Facebook. Many people do this to increase their productivity. Some folks unsophisticated in the ways of Facebook can’t handle the number of Facebook messages they get to their email in-box. Unaware of their ability to change their Facebook email settings, they just shut-down their Facebook accounts.
