If you’re incredibly popular on the internet, like me, then I can hear you crying for help. :)

Friend requests littering your inbox can get annoying. They certainly don’t need your attention right now, so why not through them to a more passive information consumption area: RSS. That way you can process them en masse, when you’re ready to.

First, we use the filters in Gmail to identify all friend request emails.

• Set up a new filter.
• In the subject area put in this text:
  {“friend request” “is now following you” “newest contact” “friends on yelp” “added you as a” “has requested your trust” “wants to be your friend” “invited you to connect” “would like to be added”}
• Click next, then select Skip the Inbox
• Check Forward it to and in the box put in a unique-email-address @ mailbucket.org. (For example: paulsfriendrequests@mailbucket.org) This will be a public feed, so… yeah.
• Click Create Filter

Your newly created RSS feed will be at http://mailbucket.org/unique-email-address.xml.

This filter will catch all friend requests from: Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Spokeo, Twitter, Yelp, and Plaxo Pulse. (And should be pretty trivial to add new ones. :)