Comments on: How Many Friends Do You Have?

By: Motorcycle Fairings

Motorcycle Fairings — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:05:08 +0000

Thnaks for the tips. It is what I was looking for.

By: Ask in WIki

Ask in WIki — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 19:50:47 +0000

On myspace i 45 friends, on facebook about 400

By: friends

friends — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 03:41:41 +0000

i havn't started on facebook yet bit on myspace, i have over 300 friends in my interested field. Nice but gettinghard to communicate wth them all due to new captcha code preventing bots to work

By: dutch schultz

dutch schultz — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:16:04 +0000

I am real glad this topic was posted. I have a new t shirt site up and have been trying to do everything mentioned above for traffic. I am starting to wonder though if I am wasting my time by spending an hour or two on facebook gaining friends, or adding friends to stumble in hopes they stumble my page, etc. I have noticed some added traffic but it is hard to say it will pay off or they will return. I am still unsure but don't want to be left behind if it does evolve like the telephone.

By: sbspalding

sbspalding — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:15:20 +0000

Whether by choice or by chance, it is definitely becoming harder to reach those who are ostensibly preaching the gospel of communication.

Occasionally we wonder why the pundits sometimes feel so disconnected from the nuts and bolts of it all. I think your point is a big part of that.

By: Greg Hollingsworth

Greg Hollingsworth — Fri, 30 May 2008 07:26:22 +0000

Well, it's either the tipping point or the point at which you jump the shark. I think there are probably quite a few people who have stopped following some of these people due to the utter lack of communication.

As I do not pay an incredible amount of attention to my twitter-feed, friendfeed, etc... on a minute by minute basis, I suppose that it doesn't bother me too much. But there are times where I would at least appreciate acknowledgment of a message.

Case in point, I sent a message to Brian Solis via twitter complimenting him on the introduction he wrote for the book PR 2.0. Now Brian has many more followers than I (and rightfully so), but I would expect at least a "Thank You", like the one I got from Geoff Livingston when I sent him a comment on his book Now is Gone (to which Mr. Solis penned the intro.)

I guess what bothers/concerns me is that some of the "social media elite" are becoming unreachable (or at least appearing to be unreachable) to anyone outside of their immediate cadre of influencers. That is exactly what is not supposed to happen, or at least that's what I thought we were trying to prevent with this medium.

By: sbspalding

sbspalding — Fri, 30 May 2008 05:48:51 +0000

I agree. Getting that many followers (if you don't manage -how- you communicate), makes it all the easier to buy into your own hype.

I wonder if there is a point where your following becomes so large that this trend reverses on itself.

By: Greg Hollingsworth

Greg Hollingsworth — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:32:33 +0000

This is simply the result of a new form of media. Those early adopters have become viewed as the "vanguard" or the "elite" and thus more people listen when they speak. It doesn't make them right or wrong, just heard.

These are not their friends anymore than the bulk of my 500+ followers on twitter are my friends. They are people who are interested in what we as communicators have to say (or in the case of spammers in bots, how many people are listening).

I hate auto-follow, open-networking and random "friending" because it is disingenuous. While I follow all of the people you mentioned on Twitter, it is because I am interested in their point of view (out of all of them Calacanis is the only one that has ever responded to an @.) I make a concerted attempt to respond to every message I receive through socnets, and most of the names you mentioned most certainly don't do that (not that they probably could). What sucks is that by accumulating that size of following, they are inevitably consolidating their own group think.

This is nothing new (as I am sure it's not too often that Dan Rather, Bob Costas, etc... responds to fan letters/emails), but it is certainly unfortunate. SocNets are supposed to increase dialogue; when dialogue becomes an impossibility, group-think becomes a true issue.

By: Maggy Young

Maggy Young — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:20:10 +0000

Think of this one anthropologically. 'Everyone is still playing the exact same game that they have always played.' And further back than maybe you meant Steve. Relate the syndrome to the need to form groups which focus around a leader. Robert Scobie's & all 20,000 friends could be the equivalent of the core followers of a political party or pressure group, before that you had groups formed around tribal leaders or princes. Even apes & chimps display the same patterns of group formation & the one with the most friends is the most powerful. Seems that prehistoric behaviour is alive & well & has transferred itself to the new technology -
the need to form & be part of large or small groups, the need to form allegiances either strong or weak, close or distant, the need for some groups to have a leader in terms of a powerful or influential person, the tribal wars which break out in the blogosphere eg. Scobie / Winer/ Arrington. On-line friends & followers = traditional human behaviour patterns arrived on the web.

By: vera lang

vera lang — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:56:34 +0000

I am getting new Facebook friend requests daily and I'm still not used to this 'frank' approach by strangers... Meanwhile, I feel that the real friends that I have, well, I've kind of lost them a bit , since they've started using Facebook to communicating with me.

From a 'business' point of view, I still rather collect email addresses for a newsletter using eWeber and communicating with them using unique, purely professional content.

Facebook is however a great tool to invite people to my website...