On Facebook, no one can hear you scream

I finally took the leap and joined Facebook last night. I had to. I am doing a research project on social networking for a client and wanted to look at a Facebook group page, which are locked up tighter than Ft. Knox unless you join.

So now I have my first social dilemma already. When you first join Facebook, it reads your e-mail address book, suggests a kabillion people you know who already have Facebook pages, and prompts you to invite them as friends. I left most of them checked and clicked OK. Or so I thought.

Now, here it is a day later, and none of them have answered. But two people I invited directly accepted almost immediately. Hmmm ... should I shave more often? Or did these friend requests never go through?

Which brings me to a fundamental point about applications like Facebook. The good news is that it is free. The bad news is that you get what you pay for. There appears to be no way to determine if you have any outstanding friend requests, the FAQ file is mute about this, and the support e-mail I sent remains unanswered for two days and counting.

So, do I risk bothering these kabillion people a second time, becoming the cyber-equivalent of the boor at the party? Or do I assume the best (or worst, depending on your perspective) and wait to see what if anything happens? Stay tuned!

P.S. If you want to be my friend on Facebook, here I am: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1213233664

*Update 4/3/08: It looks like everyone I invite individually seems to be responding. So hopefully I'm not such a bad guy after all. As for the fate of the mass invite, Facebook respondeth not.