Why don't a few new facebook friends reply to a message?

[positivethinking]

There are at least a couple people that I hadn't seen for many years and who rather quickly accepted me as a facebook friend after I sent a request with a message. I find it strange, though, that these same people didn't send a reply to the message and/or a separate message I sent. Most people usually write on my wall or make at least a little online conversation. What do you make of this? Is it common?

[gojersey]

I think it is very easy to miss the message sent along with the friend request. I know many times I forget to even look if there was an additional message. If I recognized the name, I just clicked "accept" immediately.
I think it is also common though to blow off messages from recent contacts from "the old days". I know it seems rude, but I catch myself doing it too sometimes. Many people lead increasingly hectic lives, and getting into small talk with long lost friends just for the sake of chatting can feel intrusive or even disruptive to one's schedule.
There have been at least 2 friends of mine from the past who have gotten in touch with me on social web sites and chatted to a point where they wanted to start "hanging out" or "meeting up". And I felt awful because these guys were being so nice, but I really just don't have time to make more friends with whom I could separately hang out or meet up. So now I just tend to hope that my contacts on Facebook are just keeping in touch and seeing whats new with everybody and sharing the moments and memories, not for reconnecting to the point of rekindling active friendships. Myself and most of the people I know have several hundred contacts on Facebook! Who has time to all those people? For this reason I could see myself, not necessarily ignoring messages, but being a bit standoffish with regard to them. It was so uncomfortable having to tell one friend that I really just didn't have the time to hang out with him; that's what I would be trying to avoid, and perhaps that is the deal with your friends too.
Hope that helps.