Of numbers and friends.
November 17th, 2008
Network.
I recently parted paths with a college friend. We had grown in different directions, become different people who valued different things. Time spent apart and out of touch made our personal and philosophical paths diverge ever more and the differences were painfully obvious when we occasionally spoke or met.
After college, we had gone our separate ways. I went to medical school and he became an I.T. guru and web designer and later developed his own e-commerce business. Numbers, and the bigger the better, seemed to take center stage in his thinking. I don’t blame him. E-commerce is a tough business and you have to be fierce to survive.
This parting of ways, and the role the subject of numbers took in our last conversation, made me think of social networking and the numbers game that it, in many ways, is. To some, membership in a networking site constitutes an opportunity to aggressively pursue more and more connections and ever-growing networks. Social network sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and the OWC offer these types of infinite connections. Rightfully so, they are powerful business and product development tools.
But I struggle, at times, to use them in that way. It’s not my nature to voraciously and frenetically “friend up” anyone and everyone. I need substance in the relationship and connection. I need to feel that there is some connection between us. After all, a friend is not a random person in the ether, but a human with whom I have spent time and with whom I have found commonalities. The relationship functions to enrich us both. It has meaning.
There are some interesting commonalities between the way we make our ways through social networking sites and brain development. We start out, at birth, with our higher-order brain cells interconnected randomly to vast numbers of other cells. This haphazard and random connectivity does not allow for any ordered functional process we associate with awareness, cognition, language, etc. (connections necessary to for sustaining life are functional and hard-wired in at birth). As we grow, mature, learn and gain awareness, those connections are pruned so that those remaining are meaningful and functional. Those established connections remain functional only if nurtured and maintained.
I entered the realm of social networking sites (especially Twitter) with a good deal reluctance. While I am thrilled at all the requests I receive on the social networks where I have profiles, I cannot help but feel that these connections are like those that take place in utero when the brain is forming before they are functional and meaningful. Each time I accept a connection request, I wonder if and how I will maintain a relationship with that person.
Of course, some would advise me not to worry, saying “You never know…”. The reasoning being that each social connection offers a potential business benefit to me - as someone who operates an internet publication. I do not yet have a sense of the rate of return on all the time I spend “friending up” strangers with the hope that they offer some (incalculable) business potential. Like many other slow adapters, I am reluctant to spend additional hours in front of a computer screen after doing that very thing at work. And if I have only so many hours in a day, I would prefer to devote more of them to writing the content to which my social networking activity is supposed to drive traffic.
Social connections require time and effort to foster and develop. It is often a challenge for me to meet all my obligations and responsibilities, so I fear I may not have enough time in the day to engage all my connections in a personally meaningful way. So I have chosen to request connections only of those people with whom I intend to maintain some relationship. I just don’t want to end up “pruning” any connections I make at this point. But I will not reject or decline any requests.
Sure, by being less aggressive with seeking network connections, I may be closing myself to benefits that come, serendipitously, out of connections with a friend of a friend of a friend. I am not sure what the chances of that happening are. At the core of it, though, I take my time with making new connections because I don’t yet know how I can create and nurture a meaningful personal connection with everyone in my network.
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November 17th, 2008 at 4:40 am
Well said. I spend little time on face book, though I have a profile, created largely out of curiosity. I wonder in time how many total strangers I will have as face book ‘friends’. The more strangers I have as friends, the less useful the whole idea becomes. . .
November 17th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Arthur,
Nice post. There’s a lot to chew on here.
I think inherently social networking is a platform to either:
A) Expand your social scene
B) Expand your business scene
If you’re not interested in aggressively doing either one, then Facebook or one of the other iterations may not be something that is a fit for you.
And, I’m with you, I don’t view it as an entertainment vehicle when I can spend meaningful time with people in the flesh — like family and friends.
Personally, I have numerous offline i.e. “real” friends who don’t social network and it doesn’t phase them a bit.
In my world, I count friends as people I can call in the middle of the night for help. I call acquaintances people that I have interacted with in whatever form for which I may be helpful to them or they to me.
If you view in that regard, it’s a perfectly healthy vehicle for meeting new people and that’s never a bad thing.
Take this interaction for example. You and I have fleetingly talked in person and commented on each others sites. Are you a friend? No. But, you are somebody I’m friendly with and I could email you and ask a question and ask for some doable help in some regard and I bet you would answer the bell. Likewise, I would help you, if I could. That is interesting and useful.
Jeff
November 17th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Hi Jeff
Thanks for stopping by and posting a very thoughtful comment.
I certainly am not forsaking any of the social networking vehicles and do see them as you have elaborated here. Too bad we did not have a chance to get more “face time” in Sonoma to move closer towards the “friends” end of the social connections spectrum.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
By the way, Edward, Facebook has let me reconnect with grammar school friends (from 20+ years ago). I get honestly overwhelmed by all the “gifts”, “pokes”, etc. It’s hard to keep up with it all.
November 19th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
You might want to look at Multiply.com. It’s structure is setup more for maintaining close contacts you want to have. Not a ton of request from those that find you or your business concept interesting and are just wanting to, as you put it “Friend up.”
Will you still be my friend Authur? LOL
November 20th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Hey Arthur, Intriguing post that explores ideas I often think about. LinkedIn and OWC are of interest to me while Facebook does not usually. I think that is because there is a common interest amongst my OWC and Twitter gang ( wine) and facebook for me is just time sucking friends from high school.
Sorry to hear you will not be involved with OWC anymore?
You are a valuable part of the online wine community, no matter where you apply your time.
November 20th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Thanks for dropping by Amy.
I remain a dedicated OWC member. I am just spread too thin to carry out OWC Administrator duties properly.