FROM: Laura in LA

“Follow-up question… How soon is too soon to Facebook someone? After one date, I’ve had guys FB me. Often I would prefer to never talk to these dudes again and suddenly I’m connected to them on FB!“

Ah, Mark Zuckerburg, how your social experiment befuddles us…

Dear Laura in LA,

Not that you can help how soon a guy decides to add you, but you can keep him pending (with the excuse that you never check your Request Page) until you feel comfortable that this one’s a semi-keeper and welcome in your inner internet circle (of five hundred plus friends). 
Call me old-fashioned, but I think if you’re starting to date a guy, it’s best to wait a few dates before taking it to the next step of Facebook Friends. Reason being, once you add someone, they’re privy to a whole lot of information about what you’ve been up to, stuff maybe you don’t want them to know yet – like pictures of you with your ex-boyfriend from your ski trip last winter or esoteric slutty comments from your gay friend that he could misinterpret.
 And same on his page. These things can kill the buzz on a burgeoning relationship fast. 
Unless you have CIA-level privacy settings and can set your pokies online australia new Boy to Limited Profile (which is a highly recommended setting to have available for all those pesky pervy bosses that add you in hopes of seeing you in drunken stages of undress), then maybe it doesn’t matter as much when you add people. 
But you know you want the new guy to see those photos of you in drunken stages of undress because it shows how fun and sexy and undressy you can be – so it’s best to hold a beat ’til you’ve fully reeled him in so that you don’t scare him off with too much information too soon. 
Now if you, pretty young thing, are the one doing the FB’ing and it’s someone you wouldn’t be able to be in contact with otherwise (because you’re not dating him, etc.), then play it cool and give it two to three days after meeting. Don’t drunkenly go home the night of and stalk him. That’s called embarrassing. 
Here’s the best option of all… if a mutual friend of yours took photos of you guys that night, the most casual approach is to wait until she tags him and then add him after that and play like, “Oh, look at me, I just remembered you existed! I didn’t hunt for you at all. I’m extremely cool!!”
And remember if things go sour, you can always just DELETE. I wish life was that easy. Happy Facebooking!