Effective social climbing, the Facebook way

This article is from the February issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here

Networking used to require communication skills and an actual personality. These days, upwardly mobile strivers merely need access to a Facebook account. Learn the rules of the game, and you could soon find yourself partying on some rich guy's yacht—or at least slaving away on the launch of his next start-up. Radar offers a few tips to help facilitate your ascent up the online social ladder.

1. PLAY IT COOL
Let's say it's 2:14 a.m., and you're just getting home from Les Deux in L.A., where you met a bunch of junior development execs from Paramount (they had bottle service!). Check their profiles, but do not add them as friends just yet. Only losers send out friend requests to people they've met that night. Are you a loser? Perhaps, but you have a script to sell. Best wait at least one and a half business days before friending them.

3. MONITOR YOUR SETTINGS
It's imperative to manage your news feeds, as they are often the first things others will read when they log on. "Neel has added Garden State to his favorite movies" should never be public knowledge, so either delete the feed or tweak your privacy controls. Conversely, "Neel has joined the group 'Beamer Owners Under 25'" is precisely the type of tidbit you want disseminated.

4. MIND YOUR STATUS
Never update your status more than twice a day. Browsers should know that at 10:35 a.m., "Neel is trying to regain his dignity after too many shots of Patron at Bungalow 8, London," but that by 5:03 p.m., "Neel is psyched the IPO went well and is so ready to get his drink on." You're a work hard/play hard kind of person. Right?

5. BE SINGLE
Even if you're in a relationship, you're better off leaving this field blank. If your boo insists on doing the "Neel is in a relationship with Jenn" thing, at least make sure to splash the breakup across your news feed when the time comes. You'll get lots of profile clicks and wall love.

6. KEEP GOOD COMPANY
Nowadays, employees at such prestigious companies as the New York Times and Microsoft have their own networks on Facebook. It's a good strategy to friend as many of these individuals as possible, regardless of whether you've actually met them. If Facebook claims that as of 5:33 p.m., "Neel and David Geffen are now friends," for all intents and purposes, you two were just sharing a Cobb salad at the Four Seasons. Keep in mind that some desirable pals disguise their identities—look for Tarantino with three r's or Benjamin, not B.J., Novak.

7. LESS IS MORE
Everyone knows the guy with 794 friends actually hates himself. Before accepting a friend request, ask yourself two questions: 1) Do I want to sleep with this person? 2) Is this someone I will actually talk to in real life? If the answer to these questions is no, reject away.

8. NAME-DROP
When captured at an exclusive locale or in the presence of high-profile individuals, always identify, or "tag," yourself. When writing captions for photos, always use the person's first name, or preferably their nickname ("Zuck," not Mark Zuckerberg), even if you just met. Never tag an ugly friend.

9. MAINTAIN YOUR FRIEND POOL
It's necessary to trim the fatties from your friend roster from time to time. De-friending is a surprisingly painless way to do this; the dropped party isn't even alerted to the fact that he or she has been electronically expunged. Purging sessions are particularly enjoyable while drunk. You don't want that publicist you hooked up with twice in East Hampton and never called back keeping tabs on you, do you? When culling, do keep in mind the racial makeup of your friend pool—you're all about diversity.

10. SUPPLY EVIDENCE
The images you upload should be snapshots of the lifestyle you want others to think you're living. With a few props and clever lighting, who's to say an afternoon drinking Pabst in your degenerate neighbor's backyard can't become an album titled "Pheasant Hunting in Texas With My Boys From Goldman"? As for your profile pic, never post a "funny" photo of an inanimate object or a cartoon you think you resemble, or yourself as a baby or child. You're not fooling anyone.

11. MAKE IT PUBLIC
If you were blowing lines with Lindsay at the Vanity Fair Oscar party and nobody knows, did it happen? Thankfully, there's the wall post, which allows you to broadcast the news to random browsers. Does it matter that you weren't actually invited to the Vanity Fair Oscar party? Of course not. If you post that it "totally blew this year ... they never should have moved it to Craft," people will think you were. To paraphrase the famous New Yorker cartoon, on Facebook, nobody knows you're a D-lister.

This article is from the February issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here