When it comes to Facebook, what’s more important: Having a large network of “friends” whom you don’t know? Or a smaller well-connected group of individuals with whom you have real relationships?

I consider myself a friendly person, but that’s no longer the case when it comes to Facebook. After careful thought and deliberation, I’ve decided to stop accepting friend requests from people I don’t know.

With more than 350 million users, Facebook is home to an incredible network of people. Complete strangers ask to be my friend every day. Some are so self-absorbed they’ve even prodded me to become “fans” of their pages. Others bombard me with event invites I have no interest or possible way of attending. Don’t get me started on annoying applications like Pillow Fight and Blingee Book. Enough is enough.

Personal vs. Professional

When I first began using Facebook in 2005 (thanks to the prodding of Human Events interns Katie Farber and Mary Ellen Burke), there was good reason to become friends with many people given the limited number using the social network. But now, with Facebook open to everyone, I get about three new friend requests every day. I almost always accepted every one of them, which is the reason I have more than 3,000 friends and nearly 100 requests waiting for me to approve or ignore.

What’s the value of having a large number of friends? There’s the coolness factor, of course, which might actually mean something if I was celebrity or politician. But for me, there’s simply no meaningful interaction with these individuals. They don’t comment on my status updates, and I certainly don’t comment on theirs. On the few occasions that someone does say something — usually about the latest photo of my son — my wife asks why a total stranger is remarking about a personal item.

My logic for accepting so many friends, most of whom are conservatives, was to entice them to support my work-related initiatives. But that hasn’t panned out as planned. Very rarely have I asked them do anything. And when I did invite my friends to join The Heritage Foundation’s No Energy Tax application — spamming them in the same manner they do me — hardly any joined.

At the end of the day, I learned that personal always trumps professional. And with more than 100,000 fans, Heritage’s Facebook page doesn’t need my help anyway.

Connections Count

There’s another downside to having friends you don’t know. We live in a world where people think you are who you’re connected with. I found out the hard way last week when a Heritage colleague asked about my connection to a former Department of Defense employee who was the subject of a hard-hitting piece from Streetsblog. We were connected on LinkedIn. Even though I didn’t know him, the author of the piece wrote a whole paragraph about our “connection” and made incorrect assumptions. Suddenly, Heritage was implicated in the story and I was embarrassed. Fortunately, the author of the blog post removed the reference to me when I complained.

The same scenario could play out on Facebook in the same way. In fact, earlier this year when Ithaca College alumnae Brooke Hundley made headlines for her affair with ESPN analyst Steve Phillips, the first thing I did was check our mutual friends on Facebook. The former dean of the Roy H. Park School of Communications was listed as a friend. So, too, was a student I mentored last year. People are curious about these things — and that curiosity could create headaches like the Truxes incident did for me.

Facebook Diet

Facebook is still evolving and I’m still figuring it out. It was only a few months ago that I separated my Twitter updates from Facebook. They’re not one in the same and shouldn’t be treated that way. Now when I see friends automatically post their Twitter updates to Facebook, I hide their status updates from my news feed. Sorry, not interested. I’m probably already seeing the same thing on TweetDeck.

David All, a modern grassroots communications consultant, wrote yesterday he was “going on a Facebook Friend diet for 2010. My goal is to be under 1,500 by July 4th.” I don’t have any such goal and I’m not sure I’ll make a mass purge (except for those who post flair on my wall). David has a good point, though, and I’m glad I’m not alone in my quest to reclaim my Facebook page for a more meaningful use with real friends, colleagues and associates.

The way I see it, Facebook isn’t going away, so I might as well figure out how to make it more valuable. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but I’m looking forward to a more well-connected group of people whose relationships I value more than the number of mutual friends we have.

UPDATE — Feb. 23, 10 a.m.: The former Department of Defense employee who was the subject of the Streetsblog piece notified me that the blog post has been removed due to inaccuracies. As a result, I’ve removed his name from this blog post as well.