Posts tagged as:

friendship

Determining Your Friends

by · November 20, 2009

I’ve been pondering the value and validity of the term “friend” lately. Until a few years ago, we all probably had a couple hundred friends, give or take. Social networking not only incrementalized that number, but changed the definition of the word for many people.

I have 1,300 or more “friends” on Facebook. I’ve probably met and spoken with more than you think, but not all of them. There are 18,000 or so people who follow me on Twitter. I follow most of them back. We are “friends” in a sense, too.

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Do You Know Who Your Friends Are? Google Does.

by · June 19, 2008

Robert Scoble is known for befriending nearly anyone in the social media space. It’s part of his appeal. Nice guy, well-loved blog, interesting TV show, popular columnist and everyone’s cyber-friend. But what happens when friend or follower status is taken out of context?

According to Google, Robert Scoble and I are friends.

I’ve met Robert. I’m digital friends with him on several social networks like a lot of people. We have exchanged messages on Twitter a few times, but I don’t know that he would consider me a friend in the off-line context. We might be fast friends if we lived in the same area and hung out together, but the ‘Ville and the Valley are a fair bit apart.

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