I’ve Got Friends In Low Places
Is it just me?
Maybe it is just me. I am not really sure. The strangest thing has been happening to me on Facebook.
Let me back up and start from the beginning. I see my Facebook friends as three groups. There are my New Media Friends the Susan Reynolds, Cali Lewis, and Mitch Joel types. Are we best friends? No. Do we know and hopefully respect each other in the New Media space…yes. Then there are my high school friends, college friends, parents from the kids school and my best buddies group. Lastly, there are people I just don’t know. They are friends of friends. You know the “You have 5 mutual friends” kind of thing. Or maybe they read my blog and added me, we could of exchanged business cards or something. Ill add them back, check out their blog,profile, linkedin page and such. I try not to add friends via the mutual thing unless we have like a lot of friends in common and/or know their name.(This is my disclaimer so i am not a hypocrite) Oh and never shall the these groups meet until…well.. now.
In the past 2 weeks I have gotten 5 emails or instant messages from friends going.. ” Who the heck is Joe Blow?” Ill say “How the heck do you know that person?” Their response, “Well they added me on Facebook?”. I usually tell them to ignore them unless they are interesting in expanding their friendship base. I share this with you because I find it odd. Why do people add people at random? To what end? My thoughts on this well Ill share this with you in list form.. cause people like lists.
My thoughts: (cause your dying to know)
- Some people on Facebook are clicking and adding friends at random.
- These requests are usually only friends with me, cause that why they contacted me to ask “Who is Joe Blow and why are they adding me?” Why would you want to be friends with someone you have 1 mutual friend with,is on the other side of the country and no common interest? I don’t get it.
- They don’t care who they are friends with and just want to increase their friend count. Kind of odd to me. Ego?
-Is the term “Friend” not what it use to be. People are just adding “friends” at random. Maybe we need subgroups like “Friend”, “Heard their Name”, “No Clue but lets be Facebook buddies”, “Random Add”
Am Iirked, bitter, on a rant? Maybe a little. I find it odd, that you want friends just to increase the number.
Just my thoughts after getting another call.
Agree? Disagree? Discuss…
Tags: Facebook, Friends, Networking
Filed under: 
August 30th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Well I’m not sure why this happens on Facebook, but on LinkedIn this happens so that you can increase the your reach to people who may be at companies where you are interested in finding a contact. There I usually just accept people who I know or who are in my field and ignore the requests from people who are in a completely different field or are recruiters. Even if you add someone who has no other friends, they may add some friends later and increase your reach in the future (like an MLM pyramid thing…). On Facebook I think it is just seen as a challenge or a fun game to try to get more \friends\. Or perhaps they would like to harvest your email address off your profile?
September 5th, 2008 at 9:14 am
I agree with you. I think that the strength of connections is around REAL connections. If I say someone is my “friend” I mean it (with similar categories as yours). So if you see someone who is listed as my friend (on Facebook, LinkedIn) and you want an introduction to that person for some reason, you can feel confident that I know this person in some way that is not totally random and that I can give you some background and facilitate a meaning introduction.
If I know that someone is adding people randomly, I learn not to trust their connections and therefore, the value of them as a connector is completely lost.
The only exception to this for me is Twitter. I do follow people there that I don’t know, but only if it looks like they are talking about or interested in something that we both have in common.
But then there are times (like when I met you, Dave) when a relatively random Twitter connection turns into an actual friendship (professional or personal).
November 7th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Good points. The internet has made made it easier for us to connect with each other but at the same time, its also changed the meaning, casual use and perception of the word “friend”. Seth Godin did a talk on the “uselessness” of social networking, highlighting the fact that the relationships on social networks are meaningless unless they are “real”. He posed the question, which one of your social network/internet friends would sign a 100k contract for you?
Food for thought.