Facebook. It’s a verb, it’s an adjective, it’s a voyeuristic bonafied stalking tool. I can’t get enough of it nowadays.

When I cannot fall sleep, instead of counting sheep or watching latenight reruns of poker shows, I travel to Facebookland. I visit profiles of friends, then friends of friends, then friends of friends of friends and so on. I look through photo albums and compare movie taste. Don’t judge, you do it too – admit you love it.

Yet while we revile in Facebook’s awesomeosity we must pause to note Emily Post never penned a screed on such netiquette. There are dos and don’ts and today we review them.

Friend Requests:

I have at least 14 pending friend requests. Testament to my aloof coolness? Well, duh. But a testament to other people spazzing out when they join. Listen, buddy, just because you’re friends with one of my friends doesn’t mean I want you posting on my wall.

Got it?

FB is a powerful networking tool and we cannot abuse it. And if anything, trying to network by creeping people out – yes, it’s a little creepy to get a friend request from someone you vaguely recall possibly meeting once in a meeting you forgot about long ago –is counter productive. So don’t do it.

Newsfeed:

Two keywords: privacy setting. Learn it, manage it, love it. Really, you’re not a fan of Grey’s Anatomy anymore? Suddenly over the reality craze? No longer a member of the Lactose Intolerant League? Great. But every time you add or subtract a group, preference, etc. your friends see it on their newsfeed. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s bad, but you better be the one making that decision.

“Think That’s Scary?” Check out this unbelievably real mini-doc about Facebook that explains what is truly going on while you type away… Yikes, right?

Relationship Status:

A friend of mine just separated from her husband. Understandably freaked out! Not so understandably, she RAN to Facebook and changed her status from “Married” to “It’s Complicated.” Did everyone need to know that right away? Was that good for her or her husband—with whom she obviously hasn’t worked it out? As her shocked brother-in-law wrote to me, “WTF?!!” Translate that to “Please be prudent and sensitive in the future.”

Newbies & Pros:

The pros are FB guinea piglets and I love them so. They went to High School and college when FB was first coming up. It’s as much a part of their lives as cable is for me. By now we’ve all heard the story about the job applicant who got turned down because of a randy pic from a frat kegger. You know why we’ve all heard it? It’s not apocryphal. People please, check yourself before you wreck yourself! What makes sense at 19 is wrong at 23 when you’re at your first job, friending everyone in your office, and have a humorless boss wondering why his newest hire was tagged in a photo last weekend making out with a dude in a monkey suit (or worse, a monkey sadly placed in a dude suit).

While the plight of the pros is well known, the saga of that amateur is hardly documented. These are the 30+ year olds who joined to stay relevant, to network professionally, or because they read about it in Parade. I’m not naming names (take that, Kazan!), but I heard about an entertainment bigwig who signed up to connect with his “perceived audience.” This media maven, who barely knows Web 2.0 from “Charlotte’s Web,” actually posted his home address and phone number in his profile. Facebook asked, so he answered… makes sense?

[Note: If you answered yes, please don’t join FB without first consulting with a non-snarky niece or nephew or read “Facebook for Dummies,” a very real and useful title.]

Meaning of the above: For two dramatically different reasons, both the pros and the amateurs are ignoring some common sense rules here.

Let’s sum up so you can click off and get back to you social networking mania: 1) get to know how the darn thing works, 2) learn your netiquette, 3) know all audiences, 4) think about yourself, and please, when in doubt, just repeat the mantra less is more 5) err on the side of privacy and ponder the future of whatever* is unerasable (everything*).

If you must, absolutely MUST join Facebook (really, we need to get our Scrabulous on) be your ingenious self and take your time, and if you aren’t able to figure it out, take your intern to lunch and make him do it for you!

I’d like to hear your experiences. Write on dude.