Christopher Sibona Ph.D. is the Principal Software Engineer at Oracle Corp. Christopher obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Colorado Business School in 2011. His study on why people unfriend on Facebook has helped hundreds of corporations and individuals understand what encourages engagement and what turns people off when marketing on Facebook. This is Christopher’s talk at the January 2011 Emerging Media Conference in San Francisco, CA.

1. Unfriending on Facebook:
Friend Request and
Online/Offline Behavior Analysis
Christopher Sibona
Advisor: Steven Walczak
Information Systems
The Business School
University of Colorado Denver

2. Presentation
• Overview
• Background
• Initial Model
• Instrument Design
• Data Collection
• Methodology
• Results
• Limitations
• Implications
• Future Research

3. Research Questions
1. What is the role of the friend request in
unfriending decisions.
2. Can factors in unfriending decisions be found
and do differences in the perception of
online and offline behaviors vary depending
on the unfriending decision.

4. Overview
The research results show that the initiator of the friend
request has more than their expected share of unfriends
compared to those who receive the friend request.
Survey respondents who said they unfriended for online
reasons were more likely to agree that the person
posted:
1. Too frequently about unimportant topics
2. Polarizing topics
3. Inappropriate topics
4. Everyday life topics compared to those who unfriended for
offline reasons

5. Background
• Unfriend was named the word of the year by
the New Oxford American Dictionary for 2009
(Goldsmith, 2009).
• unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a
‘friend’ on a social networking site such as
Facebook.

6. Online Social Networks
The systems allow individuals to
1. Construct a public or semi-public profile
within a bounded system,
2. Articulate a list of other users with whom
they share a connection, and
3. View and traverse their list of connections
and those made by others within the system
boyd and Ellison, 2007

7. Friendship Formation and Dissolution
• Friendships created with those who share
similar values (Lea and Duck, 1982;
McPherson et al., 2001)
• People tend to create friendships with those
who share a similar race and ethnicity
followed by
age, religion, education, occupation and
gender and roughly in that order (McPherson
et al., 2001).

8. Friendship Model
Paul Wright, 1969
• Voluntary Interdependence
• Difficult-to-maintain
• Values of Friendship
– Stimulation
– Utility
– Ego

9. Friendship Process
Four elements:
1. P must desire to have O as a friend
(attraction)
2. P must initiate a move to establish a
friendship with O.
3. O must recognize P’s overture of friendship.
4. O must reciprocate P’s offer of friendship
Hallinan, 1979

10. Facebook
• One person initiates a friend request and one
person receives the request
• If the friend request is accepted the two
becomes friends on Facebook
• It takes agreement to become friends on
Facebook
• Visible links are generated
• The friend request is very clear in the online
environment compared to real life

11. Friendship Dissolution
• Not simply friendship formation in reverse
• Some friendships end in conflict but most friendships
fade away
• No permission needed to end a friendship in either
the online or offline world
• In the online world it is clear that someone made a
conscious decision to unfriend the other.
• Online unfriending does not necessarily mean offline
unfriending
Duck, 1982; Sprecher and Fehr, 1998; Baxter, 1979.

12. Netiquette
• Formal and social rules can govern what is
posted online
• 15% of all messages in Usenet forums are
considered conduct correcting (Smith et al.,
1997)
• Facebook has formal rules
• Facebook users can act as moderators to their
wall – delete posts, limited profiles
• Ultimately, Facebook users can unfriend those
whose posts are troubling

13. What Americans do online
Rank Category 2010 Share of 2009 Share of % Change
time time
1 Social Networks 22.7% 15.8% 43%
2 Online Games 10.2% 9.3% 10%
3 E-mail 8.3% 11.5% -28%
4 Portals 4.4% 5.5% -19%
5 Instant Messaging 4.0% 4.7% -15%
6 Videos/Movies 3.9% 3.5% 12%
7 Search 3.5% 3.4% 1%
8 Software Manufacturers 3.3% 3.3% 0%
9 Multi-category 2.8% 3.-% -7%
Entertainment
10 Classifieds/Auctions 2.7% 2.7% -2%
Other 34.3% 37.3% -8%
Nielsen, August 2010: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/what-americans-do-
online-social-media-and-games-dominate-activity/

14. Media Roundup
• People like lists:
– 10 signs you should unfriend someone on
Facebook
– 12 great tales of de-friending
– 8 types of people to unfollow on Twitter or
Defriend on Facebook
– 8 signs you should unfriend someone on Facebook
– 7 reasons to unfriend someone on Facebook
• Articles give people permission to others to
unfriend

15. Data Collection
Stats:
• 4,961 recruitment tweets sent
• 1,137 survey completed – 2,084 surveys
started – 54.6% of those who started the
survey finished
• Overall response rate is 42.0%
• Response rate for those who completed 22.9%
• Total number of tweets sent 6,935

16. Recruitment Tweets
Sample tweet screened for recruitment from @X:
@Y You can always 'defriend' on FB, no? You
should always have the option of 'correcting'
your mistakes. :P
Recruitment Tweet from @UnfriendStudy:
@X I saw your tweet about unfriending.I have a
survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/unfriend-t
Your input very important.PhD stdnt

17. Friend Request – Unfriend Decision
700
600
500
400
Unfriend Decision
300 Expected
200
100
0
I initiated Other initiated DK

18. Friend Request – Unfriended By
300
250
200
150 Unfriended By
Expected
100
50
0
I initiated Other initiated DK

19. Construct Creation
• Four online constructs and two offline
• Online
– Unimportant/frequent, polarizing posts, inappropriate
posts and everyday life posts
• Offline
– Disliked Behavior
– Change in Relationship
• Questions moved to more appropriate constructs:
– Racist: from polarizing to inappropriate.
– New Information: from behavior to change

20. Reliability
Measure Questions Cronbach’s Num of
alpha Qtns
Unimportant Unimportant, Frequent .693 2
/Frequent
Polarizing Politics, Religion .766 2
Inappropriat Inappropriate, sex, swearing, sexist, .826 6
e racist, unflattering
Everyday Life Exercise, purchases, eating, money, .917 11
job, celebrities, pets, sports,
promotion, child, spouse
Behavior Did misdeed, dislike, behavior, .920 7
personality, trust, betray, broke rule
Change Divorce, romantic end, incompatible .677 5
friends, geography, new information

21. Implications
• Those who are negatively affected by
unfriending may wish to avoid certain
behaviors
• They may want to avoid posting too frequently
about unimportant topics, posting about
polarizing topics, posting about inappropriate
topics, and posting about everyday life.
• Narrowcast postings to those who may be
interested in your posts

22. Facebook Implications
• Facebook’s mission is to: “give people the
power to share and make the world more
open and connected.”
• Bundle posts from users who post frequently
• Promote lists, make them easier to use
• Machine learning – let people code which
kinds of posts they are interested in seeing
and avoid those they are not interested in
seeing

23. Lessons?
• Friendship model
• Voluntary interdependence
• Difficult-to-maintain
• Values
– Stimulation – be entertaining – be interesting – “I don’t
care what you had for breakfast – unless it was awesome.”
– Utility – economic (promotion) non-economic
(information, fix problems, etc.)
– Ego-support – Products can support ego – smart phones,
smart car, smart food, intelligent office, “choosy Moms
choose Jif,” “We lost your luggage but are looking for it.”

24. Thank you
-
Questions?