8:00 AM -- To all the folks who added me as a friend on Facebook recently, but found that they can't spy on me as much as they'd like to:

I'm sorry.

I feel like I should blame Jeff Pulver for this dilemma. About a month ago, the man himself decided that he was quitting LinkedIn and moving his professional contacts to Facebook.

Which I think is pretty dumb, personally.

Nothing against Jeff -- whom I've never met -- but Facebook is not, and was never really meant to be, a professional network.

Along with MySpace , Friendster, and all the other social networking sites that I haven't looked at in ages, it was meant to connect friends, former classmates, ex-lovers -- you get the idea -- but not the kind of folks that you meet in a professional setting.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want my professional contacts to be able to view pictures of me out with friends and half-drunk out of my mind. I don't really want my professional contacts seeing pictures of me clumsily fumbling a football in a pickup game or bare-chested on a beach, surrounded by beautiful ladies. (Those latter pictures don't exist, but just as a for-instance.)

Anyway, given the number of adds I've received within the last week alone, it seems people agree more with Mr. Pulver than they do with me. And for that reason, I'm glad that there's such a thing as "privacy settings" and a "limited profile" for me to hide behind.

So to the PR person who never called me back about her company but felt she'd like to add me as her "friend," to the industry contact who I'll probably get coffee with next week, to my editor (sheesh)...

I'm sorry, but there's just a certain side of me that maybe you don't need to see.

But um, thanks for the add.

— Ryan Lawler, Facebook Junkie, Light Reading