I would bet Mick Jagger did, to the best of his ability and technology.

Speaking for myself, as someone who probably has solicited you, I do wish there were a way to tell who I had asked to be a fan prior, so that I need not ask again. I try not to double up to the best of my ability. But it is a world in which all the marketing tools at one's disposal may be, and perhaps ought tot be, brought to bear.

If you dislike the pitch, it's easy to click "no." I do try not to re-bother people, but as mentioned, there is no easy way to tell who those are.

That block feature is the best thing ever, right along with the ignore button. I use both a LOT.

I don't get the whole fan thing either. I don't need to belong to 75 random groups just because I can.

It's likely about the money.

"Companies that use Facebook fan pages to market themselves to
consumers can significantly increase sales, word-of-mouth
marketing and customer loyalty among a subset of their customers,
according to new research from Rice University's Jones Graduate
School of Business. The study is featured in the March issue of
the Harvard Business Review."
http://www.emarketingandcommerce.com/article/study-finds-facebook-fan-pages-effective-marketing-tools/1

I'll be honest - I just don't get the Facebook stuff. If I want to stay connected with friends, I use a telephone. I don't have a job in which networking is vital. My life is much too boring to feel the need to "tweet" messages about my activities to the known universe ["Hey, I'm hanging up laundry!"]. I don't want to be friends with people who I hated in high school. If I wanna be a fan of something, I don't need to declare my allegiance to the public.

Listening to Amy gripe about her recent Facebook issues is a soothing reassurance that I chose well in staying out of that fracas.

*****Do people know if you "ignore" them on Facebook? Because a lot of people are contacting/"friending" me because of my column or book, I don't operate the same way I would if I were just a private person there.*****

Not unless you know them in real life, and they ask you if you've seen their status update.

Ah, ignore. Such a beautiful thing.

Truthfully? My real reason for even making a FB profile was so I could keep an eye on what my girls are doing on there! Other than that, FB is such a time-sucker I hate even going on the check on them! Once in a while, I might post a status update or comment on someone else's posts, but other than that, I pretty much ignore it. It just ain't that big a deal to me.

What bugs me is the constant messages about someone finding an orphaned animal, fish, or an object that they want to 'give' you, they keep prompting you to take them. People have fish tanks, farms, and all kinds of claptrap where they have to do stuff to raise fish , build a barn, I don't know, I still haven't looked into any of those applications...some people have serious free time! They need to spend that time on their real kids and homes methinks :-D

It's been great for me to find old friends I lost contact with since moving to Japan and going through a succession of moves/computer crashes. I don't update all that often though.

I played farmville for a little while, but it got old fast.

Crella, you can hide all that stuff. When you see it in your feed, hover in the upper right corner of the post - you'll see a hide button and you can choose to hide either just the application or everything the person does. It's awesome.

Also, if anyone sends you a request to join any of that crap, there's always a small "block application" link underneath. That's awesome too.

I have so much stuff blocked now I barely get anything in my feed that's irrelevant anymore.

I'm with Ann - I hide applications I don't use, hide people that send me too much annoying stuff, block applications that send me requests I don't want...

And I can play the games I want to play, yet still find the posts from the people I know.

However, I haven't yet find a way to not be informed every time my brother fans some really stupid page/group.

As for what's up with the "you should friend THIS page" stuff - as far as I can tell, you "win" the Facebook popularity contest if you get a bunch of people to click "fan" or "join". That's all.

I am forever indebted to you for this inforatimon.