In recent weeks I have read of a view situations where teachers have been sending friend invitations to students. It is also happening in the sport world were coaches and inviting their athletes and athletes are inviting their coaches to be friends.

Most cases the intent is innocent, as facebook and twitter are very popular social networks used for communicating with others. However, some think sending a friend request to a student or athlete you teach or coach is crossing the line. I think as a coach you might want to reduce the risk of something bad happening and play it safe.

So what are the Alternatives

With Facebook there are alternatives to sending friend requests and communicating to your team at that level. Pages and Groups are great tools to keep in touch with team members of students. Mashable Social Media Blog has a very informative post outlining the difference.

If you are planning to go the Facebook Page or Group route, you need to know some of the differences.

From my perspective as a coach the biggest difference is that groups give you more control over how can join, where the page is more of a promotional space.

So if you want to only communicate to you team create a group, if you want the world to know how your team is doing create a page.