Photo courtesy of Flickr user kk+
One of the bright sides of last week’s busy week was that I met a lot of new people between my new co-workers and a new cast and crew. I spared no expense in quickly adding them on Facebook.
A recent conversation with a friend of mine led me to wonder about how social media has redefined our idea of relationships in the social media realm.
To an extent the number of friends or followers we have is a measure of one’s social capital. Ashton Kutcher has 4.7 million followers on Twitter while I just have a meager 459. I think the idea is best captured in Demetri Martin’s song, “I have 300 friends…on MySpace.”
I also have 300 friends on MySpace- but what does that really mean?
Having a large amount of friends online could leads to being labeled as a friend whore, a person who is eager to artificially pad their numbers.
Social media has given us a metric to something once unmeasurable (our friendships and relationships;) that number alone doesn’t determine our street cred. You need to portray an image that backs up that number.
For instance DC Theatre writer Joel Markowitz has 2,861 friends on Facebook. His job as a theatre writer explains why he has hundreds of actors as friends. Everybody in the local theatre scene has been interviewed by Joel or has read one of his articles.
But how about a DC photog that also has thousands of friends? Unlike Joel perhaps this individual barely knows his connections past the photo they appeared in. Is he a friend whore- or merely using his Facebook as a client network?
Has social media changed who we consider friends? The collective nature of social networking encourages that we connect with everyone we make contact with. My personal policy is to only friend people on Facebook that I’ve personally met and want to keep in touch with. Business contacts? That’s what Linked-In is for. Is there a line that determines who we truly want in our personal network?
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