Am I, or Am I Not, Your Friend?
Remember back in school when someone would come up to you and ask
‘Do you want to be my friend’
Didn’t that feel awkward?
Friendship is something that grows between people. It is not a black and white thing. With real friends you don’t have to declare your friendship. You feel there is a bond between you and someone and maybe one day you will describe this person as ‘my friend’ and suddenly realize that you have become friends!
These days I receive several ‘Friend requests’ every day. From Hyves, Flickr, LinkedIn, Plaxo and the other Social Networks I am registered on. 95% of the time I spend on these social networks is spent accepting friend requests. The other 5% I spend updating my profile.
And yes, I feel awkward most of the time. Most of these people aren’t friends but just people I might have met once, or twice or maybe even every day but I wouldn’t call them friends. Or maybe I would.
The Social Networking world is too black and white right now. I either connect or I don’t. This is not how real life works.
In a perfect world a social network won’t force me to make choices and make me label my relations. It would simply quantify contact points. Other people would be able to see that I once met Bill Clinton but we don’t actually exchange email. It would see that some people I only meet socially and other people I work with all day. And some of those people I work with I also regularly have beer with.
In a less than perfect world Social networks will stop asking me to connect with people. They will only ask me whether we have met before and if so how often. It would allow me to click the ‘Met once‘, ‘Didn’t talk for longer than 5 minutes‘ and the ‘Would like to meet more often‘ button too.
Facebook asks me to enter the type of relationship I have with someone. But only AFTER we are connected. Same with Hyves. They should both take the next step and just ignore the whole connecting step. Simply ask: how do you know this person?
Just don’t forget the ‘I did not have sex with that women‘ button…
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10 Responses to “Am I, or Am I Not, Your Friend?”
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Interesting article. In my opinion distinction between online contact and real contact remains. If there was no digital contact established before and no data has been collected so far, I still believe that there is no need to seperate users with initial contact. Instead, let the intensity of contact after established digital contact within these social networks determine the relationship with a particular user. This way you will automatically indentify your real friends against those who are one time visitors. In fact, there could be a wide range of different types of associations with contacts which contributes to a better understanding of your relationships with them. In our case we use location (closest contact), shared communities, shared hangouts, etc. If you’d argue that you want instant recognition of your friends, solutions like Open Social/Open ID may provide these in the foreseeable future.
Your damned right (always nice to hear, isn’t))
That’s why i like twitter.com. Where people can follow each other and …… maybe……become friends
For most people it is not the value of the connection that counts but the number of it. Having 500+ connections makes you a very important and/or popular person, and once you’re there you start worrying about the quality of your connections, you’re in that stage right now. For most platforms lots of connections also gives you influence; quantity does matter, so stop whining and keep accepting your invites ;-)
Boris, as you have reached the 500+ connections on Linkedin and probably similar number on other networking sites, it is good to evaluate the value of these relationships. What did these connections bring you? Are these people really interested in Boris or just in another connection in their list? From the personal branding perspective, I agree with Rick Mahn (http://rickmahn.com/2007/09/20/why-your-blog-is-your-social-network/) where he puts that your blog is your social network. Your blog is the place where people who share your interests and views will join you and meet. Your blog is the place where people can contribute to your activities and even become friends. I think that the blogs of people will play a growing role with more value in the social networks of professionals in the near future.
@Tom: so what we need is a portable Social Network that lives in your blog?
Social networks are so 1.0. Adding your relation type won’t solve the problem, even if you have a full profile of the type of relation you have with a person you won’t find any more value in the network. Linkedin is nothing more than an over complicated address book. It doesn’t help you in any way do the things you do in a more efficient or effective way.
Relations only have value because you can act differently in congruence with these relations.
Why would you want to put in the system if you have met a person or not. We are emotional beings and we act accordingly. Why not address the issues and provide a way to describe how you feel about this person. This is likely to influence you more than the pure facts.
@arjen: I had to look up “congruence”. Beautiful word!
Boris, what we need is a way to manage the visitors and contributors to our blogs. And also a way to create connections between the readers of our blogs on shared interests in way of thinking and working, topics and persons. Ten or twenty people who are readers of your articles and are posting comments are of more value than 500+ connections with people you hardly know. The people related to your blog are willing to share their knowledge and network and time with you.
In a sense I agree. But then again, is’nt it the charm of online behaviour that there’s room for imagination? I guess for the majority that’s exactely why virtual personality appeals to them.
But yes, I do understand your point of meaningless social networking.
But I guess verticals (powered by advertising money) on themes will change this.
I had a dream that I met Boris two nights ago. Really. Does this mean I want to be his friend?
Boris and I have never met, but I keep in touch with Boris (and he with me) through this blog, twitter, email occasionally. Boris and I have often been in touch and exchanged ideas for almost two years - but we’ve never met. Are we friends? Maybe we need new words like ‘Vriend’ or ‘Eriend’?
@Tom - Interesting what Blog Friends (from i-together) is doing at Facebook in that area - they have a facebook application that allows me to have my blogs (or those I am interested in), PLUS posts from my friends’ blogs, PLUS posts from my frieends’ friends’ blogs on the topics I’m interested in on my profile page. - and very easily navigable without leaving the profile.
See it at http://apps.facebook.com/blogfriends/
Regards, David