Yes, that's what I meant. At the moment, real-life friends know they should contact me through different channels, but if I get more active on Facebook they may have the desire to tag me in pictures, mention events where I've been and all that stuff which I traditionally don't care for (if you want to know something you can ask me), but the other side of the coin is that I don't really have any secrets, not to mention people can still post the same pictures publicly and talk about me at an event etc. so one could wonder whether this step changes anything about my privacy anyway.
Furthermore, I can invite those Facebook friends to the Facebook page of my company once it's finished and I believe that could yield profit for me without any real costs.

Note that I don't add classmates etc. at the moment either, so I suppose a compromise is possible as well. I'm just trying to figure out whether there's any reason for me to not just accept all invites/invite everyone..

The spam-argument doesn't concern me too much, I'll just remove them or go back to barely using Facebook then.

Do remember that the secret police of various governments (probably including your own) use Facebook to keep track of people. A friend request from someone you don't know could be from one of hundreds of thousands or millions of sock puppet accounts by people whose job it is to keep track people who are stepping outside the bounds of acceptable thought and action.

If you think they'll never have a reason to go after you, this would not be a concern (at least, not until you wise up). If you are like most people, who (whether they know it or not) do have things they need to hide, being discrete and cautious on social media is an absolute necessity - but second-best to not using it at all.

"Spam" might not be the right word - the problem is not so much a large number of posts by a few individuals as a few posts by a large number of individuals. You will likely have minimal interest in what they post, and will end up removing them if you want FB to be useful to you in the way that is intended, so there's little point in adding them in the first place.
Of course, a lot depends on what your company is selling and who its intended customers are.

BTW, "I don't really have any secrets" assumes that anything posted about you can only be damaging if it is true, which is not the case at all.

+1 Little P

A good friend of mine was forced to change his name because of the vile smears put online by repulsive left wing blogger scum. Never underestimate the hatred and callousness that lurks in the hearts of some of the filth of the internet.

Alright, so if I were to use Facebook only for advertising, updating and stuff, doesn't that solve all problems mentioned?

@Litter Picker: First of all, the company is Broad Expert, check broadexpert.com if the type is relevant. Explaining isn't as easy as you might expect and I don't have the time right now.

Fair enough about damaging posts, but if I gain any publicity (which I certainly hope), people can always lie. At least Facebook would give me an opportunity to reply and defend myself.

Are you trying to promote yourself or a product/business? I'm pretty sure, but not certain, that you can set up a commercial FB page.

I know, I actually just did that (facebook.com/broadexpert, feel free to like :-P). Still learning..
You can't just invite random people to like your page though (although I assume they can find and like it on their own initiative). You *can* invite friends to like your page however, hence the dilemma. I do rely mostly on mouth-to-mouth advertising (is that a phrase in English?) at the moment, so it could potentially make a significant difference, just to get the word out on a larger scale.

I'm also busy learning for exams which start tomorrow, so apologies if I cut corners right now :-)

"Word of mouth". You can still use your personal account to help promote, it just gives you some separation.

The English is "word-of-mouth" advertising, just so you know. :)

steephie, friend everyone in the world. Don't let anyone miss out in knowing you.

As a seperate note, my company is very much meant to be a continuation of my persona in a way and I want to go in the direction of a social enterprise (sort of, maybe I'll explain another time), so for both reasons I think a personal approach (I'm quite casual when doing business anyway) is useful and while I consider publicity for myself a complete side product, my company might profit from sharing in my personal 'image', so personal publicity may be converted to publicity for my company anyway, showing my continuity in the ideas I not only sell but live by myself which in turn improves the reputation of the company as a company which actually believes in its principles (which seems like a rare thing, sadly).

I can never quite figure out whether abgemacht is just joking or actually trying to tell me something while joking.

Steephie, there are 1.25 billion monthly active Facebook users. That's a lot of potential business if you friend everybody.

@Steephie, make privacy settings for your account, and a page for your business. Tada no more privacy issues, are we done with this thread now?

@jmo: I did and I did and you totally missed the point (feel free to read the thread), but I was pretty done, yeah. You just bumped it, not me.

We should probably bump this thread every 24 hours just to be sure we're done.

In that case, I should probably mention http://broadexpert.com and facebook.com/broadexpert again.

Steephie, has Facebook rescinded your right to make friend requests yet?

Could they do that? I figured Facebook actually seems to promote friending people through clever tricks..

If you're worried about people tagging you in things, I believe you can set your privacy settings to only allow things to be posted on your wall/tagged if you approve it. That's just off the top of my head, but it seems like it'd make sense.

You can report someone for friending you spammily. Enough reports and they'll shut you down.

Ah then the dilemma is solved. I'll only add people I actually know.
Thanks for the info!

Actually I didn't miss the point, the point was you were concerned about what other people, ie your friends, would tag you in. You can't invite randoms to your page, but you can invite friends. Hence you want more friends but have privacy concerns.

Facebook lets you control who can tag you in what if you set up your privacy controls right. You can also group your friends into groups and have the permissions very robustly set up to protect your privacy even while you expand your business. Allowing you to use run your "social enterprise" and "private life" on the same account.

Or at least that was your fake point. I'm pretty sure your real point, just like every post you make here is to advertise the fact that you are starting a business.

At least Facebook would give me an opportunity to reply and defend myself - Good luck with that.

@jmo:
Ah, in that case I missed your point!
Thanks for the info, didn't know that.

As for advertising, not only is that not me, but I know mentioning that any mention here tends to generate 0 income. So if I mention http://broadexpert.com and facebook.com/broadexpert a third time, I assure you it's because you implicitly and explicitly accused me of only caring about advertising and I think it's a funny rebuttal.

Did it cross your mind that I posted this thread because I might be interested in knowing how best to use Facebook for both my company and private stuff? Is that such a crazy thought that you assume another motive is needed, or are you so prejudiced that you see a steephie-post and look for any connection to my company because why else would I post?

yes it is a crazy thought. if you want to know that, you would just type "how to use Facebook for both my company and private stuff" into your search bar.

Even if you don't care about privacy, your real friends might. Most people post photos, articles, etc, as "friends" or "friends of friends". If you accept friend requests from random spammers, that gives them a foothold to see some of your friends' info and to be more believable when they friend-request and spam them.

In short, friend everyone and your actual friends will probably think you're an arsehole and block you.