[...] The Meaning of Friend 04/23/2008 [...]

[...] The Meaning of Friend (12 comments) [...]

We may not be “friends”. But we can be acquaintances. Just as we were before Twitter when we “knew” each other from blogs ad mailing lists. Just as I “knew my three penpals in elementary school and high school.

I know my sister better through IM, Twitter, and her blog than I did when we were living in the same house!

I’m confused when I read “Twitter forces you to follow anyone who you’ve allowed to follow you”. It doesn’t. It certainly hasn’t at any time since Sept 2007. Why do you think it does? (Dan – you don’t have to follow anyone you don’t want to follow and you can block anyone you don’t want following you.)

I’m so sorry when I see people lock their Twitter streams. I guess if you’re tweeting Very Private Things but then… why are you using Twitter?

Well today, we met for the first time at NY Web 2.0 meetup

Twitter or Wordpress didn’t make us friends before, but it certainly helped build that after meeting in real life as we had so much to talk about as we already knew a little bit about eachother. It cuts through that *sometimes* nauseating state of figuring out “is this person interesting”.

Well in any case, great post. I think there needs to be a follow up post on the “schematics of online friendship”. I am seeing a graphic that looks like

1. Twitter Follower
2. Twitter Following
3. Flickr Contact
4. Viddler Friend Up (seriously, it’s smaller but cooler for web design ppl.)
5. UStream or YLive for live chatting with ppl (little face to face)
6. Maybe a Skype Voice or Phone call
7. Meet randomly (no creepiness allowed) in real life
8. Facebook Friend
9 If that turns into a professional opportunity – LinkedIn it up. If it’s not, not allowed!
10. There is one here that supersedes it all, that I can’t say, as it would come off creepishly, if anyone guesses, beers on me in NYC next time I am in town!

Whilst we may be getting updates constantly and your best friend is only getting a summary, I would presume that it is balanced out with things you would talk to your best friend about but not mention over Twitter? This to me, further separates the two – Online friends may have a constant stream of thoughts and activities delivered to them but your Offline friends are much more likely to be informed of anything important and less likely to be subjected to anything too trivial ;)

Mario, I think you hit the nail on the head with the term “peer.” It’s more general than “colleague,” implies equality and yet is certainly more impersonal than “friend.” But it’s like that old word problem: If some peers are colleagues, and all friends are peers, are some peers friends? :-P

I think Ben touches on this when he talks about the “Contact” distinction that some of these sites make. On Brightkite for instance, when someone adds me as a friend I’m asked to reciprocate, but I can choose whether or not to consider them a “trusted friend” and then I can add a privacy distinction between the level of detail on my location that contacts vs. trusted friends can see.

Perhaps it’s the subtle difference between American and British English, but Matt uses the word “associate” in place of “peer.” To me, associate is strictly work-related while peer is more often used in an academic setting. Still, both sound rather impersonal and formal.

Russ brings up the issue of “audience” and how that affects the persona that we choose to display in various venues across the web. It’s a large enough topic that I don’t think I’d do it justice to address here…perhaps another blog post later.

To Dan, I’m sorry for cluttering your Twittersphere. Yes, it’s kinda dumb that Twitter forces you to follow anyone who you’ve allowed to follow you (and as a result I can no longer follow you), but I suppose it’s the easiest solution for them. If it’s any consolation, I won’t be going to another conference for a while so it’s back to regular Twitter volume for me. In any case, thanks for commenting on the blog. I’m glad you’re reading it!

P.S. Matthew was quoting Blackadder. It’s best to just ignore him ;)

Now, one could argue that everyone I let see my feed I should also follow, but I don’t subscribe to that philosophy. :) Some people, even if I like them, I don’t want to follow them, for various reasons. People who, say, live twitter conferences… ;)

[...] know us? Will it ever end? Whitney Hess posted about the meaning of friend the other day on her blog, which she started thinking about after reading a post on Russ Unger’s blog.  She tries to [...]

It’s interesting to me that we share a lot of the same things–Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and our perception of how we expect to use them is similar, but different yet.

And that’s part of what complicates it all–we have different expectations. I expect to be in touch with a lot of my LinkedIn people–and I use that more than Facebook right now, based upon who is following me.

And, of course, who is following your forces out your own personal filter to a degree, right? Not you, Whitney, but me, Russ. I can’t blurt things about work, things work-related, or even if I’m looking for work because I’ve got an ex-boss/co-worker/higher-up-in-the-company on all my lists.

And, of course, how do you say “no” to those people, right?

All of that aside, I think you’re right, Whitney. I think we’re friends–a bunch of us–and I think we’d purposefully look out for each other, but it’s also partially based-upon the foundation of our connections and/or how those have expanded.

Either way, all this sure is cool.

Most of my ‘friends’ on Facebook and Flickr are people I’ve never met in person and only know through the exchange of ideas/discussion/abuse (hehe) on the Internet. I’d still refer to them as ‘friends’ – especially if they are great people like Matthew Oliphant, but more recently I have also started referring to some of them as ‘associates’ instead because…well, they really don’t know me that well (and vice-versa!)

Sadly, most of my ‘Online Friends’ will never get to know me all that well – but hey: that could be in my favour as they might like me even less if they knew me better!

Also – I’ve subscribed to your rss feed :)