by Jack Roviere

Created on: July 24, 2010

Sometimes you think you know a guy (or girl)...You might have checked your Facebook account one day to discover that you have a friend request. You see someone whose profile picture may look a little familiar, but you're not sure if the name rings a bell. Still, there are a few shared friends between you, so you go ahead and decide to add this person.

It doesn't take long to realize that you apparently didn't know this person well after all. Perhaps you just come to this realization naturally over time. Or perhaps, you (and all of your friends who also had added this person) must unfortunately learn this painful fact only after diving through a barrage of spam from the individual via wall posts, private messages, application requests, and so on.

But now you are sure that you know what you want to do: you want to delete this Facebook friend. But how can you do it?

Facebook changes its site design somewhat regularly, and if you aren't aware, simple features can be hidden out of grasp. The ability to delete from friends, for example, isn't in the most obvious location, but it also isn't completely hidden.

To delete an unwanted friend, first, you must go to their profile profile page. Look along the left side (the side with the Profile photo), because the feature that you want is along this left-hand column. Scroll down. Below photos of this person. Below videos of this person. Below this person's information box, below mutual friends, and below all friends this person has. Underneath all of that, there should be three options: "Suggest friends for (this person)", "Report/block this person", and "Remove from friends." Now, if this person truly has been spamming you and all of your other friends (as the example from above - a true story - suggested), then perhaps you ought to report or block this person.

However, barring that extreme possibility, the Remove from friends option will be enough.

Be aware that when you use this option, the only way to reverse it is to request to befriend the person. Facebook does *not* broadcast when you delete a friend (although the other person, if he or she decides to search for your page, will learn that you are no longer a friend), so if you try to add that person as a friend again, then that will reveal that you defriended the person in the first place.

An alternate way to delete a friend on Facebook is via that all friends listing. If you go to the top-most blue bar, and look toward the upper-right hand, you should be able to see a menu for "Account." If you click that, you can see an option called "Edit Friends." Select this option to see a listing of all of your friends *and* pages you are fans of. Here, you can "remove the connection" to any friend or fanpage that you "like," where every person is listed alphabetically according to first name.

Hopefully, you won't have to delete friends too often on Facebook, but if you must, you need not worry, because the process is simple, easy, and private.

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