Come May/June(the new batch into the IIMs) and seniors are deluged by friend requests from the junior batch, most not even accompanied by a basic introductory message. If it is someone like me, they will write back politely explaining that they do not add strangers. But most people just take a cursory look, confirm from the profile that it is an IIM-A student, and then add it(even faster if it is a girl :)), as a friend.
I blogged earlier(http://andy161.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-facebook-becoming-new-orkut.html) on the trend of Facebook becoming a community of strangers(not friends), and that is quite applicable here.
Some enterprising people(only girls so far) have been using that time window, to add IIMA people as their friends. For example, Ankita Mittal(http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002546811577). She is not an IIMA student/alumnus(I confirmed this from our IIMA records), but has already added 50+ IIMA students on the basis of the fake profiles. These profiles may be created by males, but they must have noticed the faster response rate when a good looking female pic is created!
Now, this will only work online-when it comes to a job search/attending alum meets etc they will be caught red handed. But they may be able to fish for relationships(and hope it is condoned when it goes far!). Or they may be Media persons in disguise, waiting to extract nuggets from the status messages/other things posted by students.
Takeaway:- Whatever their motivation, this is pretty disgusting, and I encourage you to report these fake profiles as abuse whenever noticed. From an IIM branding perspective, people faking their identities on social networks are free riding, and this is unacceptable.
i have a theory actually. Its possible that those profiles are created by reporters to keep track of IIM gossip
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