Facebook etiquette: excuse me, would you mind awfully if I poked you?

In a week where Mini-Me has learnt how to address the Queen correctly as she drops her a note to express her excitement of the forthcoming Diamond Jubilee, I am wondering about the etiquette of Facebook.

Are we foisting personal information on our friends and acquaintances?  Or have we become consistently nosy about our neighbours and insanely curious about those we hardly even know?  All this amounts to a constant stream of noise as we tune into our parallel existence, the Facebook world.

Either way, here are my etiquette-obsessed observations:

1)      Zuckerberg created Facebook messaging for a reason.  We don’t all need to know everything so therefore the direct and private message facility helps to avoid over-exposure.

2)      If someone asks you a question in response to your status update, do answer them.  I am sure it is rude to just ignore them.

3)      Don’t ask someone you don’t know to be your Facebook friend. It’s just bizarre.  Walking in the park, you wouldn’t just go up to a stranger and ask them to be your friend.  Why do it on Facebook?

4)      Quite simply, why over-share? (she says with a self-indulgent blog)  Spice up your status updates.  Do we all really need to know what you had for breakfast?

5)      The eternally grumpy Facebook friend; we all have one.  Why can’t they just go and rant in a dark room instead?

6)      874 friends.  Is that really necessary or even achievable?

Navigating social situations in this virtual world can be downright tricky, let’s learn as we go….