Friends are an extremely important part of most people’s lives. The question Who are your friends?
, is continually asked across The Web through applications that form part of the social media phenomenon. If you join Twitter or Facebook, one of the actions you are almost immediately asked is to identify your friends. But relationships in a digital world are not so absolute.
Human beings are social creatures–not occasionally or by accident, but always. Sociability is one of our core capabilities, and it shows up in almost every aspect of our lives as both cause and effect. Society is not just the product of its individual members; it is also the product of its constituent groups. The aggregate relations among individuals and groups, among individuals within groups, and among groups forms a network of astonishing complexity.
Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, 2008
Unlike real-world friendships, The Web has affected the number of relationships you can have and maintain and the intimacy of those relationships, enabling us to create different types or groups of friends. The astonishing complexity
that Clay Shirky identifies is suddenly made infinitely more complex and abstract through digital media.
We now have communication tools that provide the flexibility to match our social needs and as a result are discovering new ways to make friends. These tools — better known as social media
or social software
— provide us the ability to share, cooperate with one another and indeed take collective action, all outside the traditional clubs and groups to which our parents would have been acustomed. These tools have had a profound affect on how we distinguish or describe friendship.
An online friendship is better described along a spectrum defined by the actions people take and how we feel about them.
Mike Arauz (permalink)
Mike Aruz identifies 7 stages of online friendship in the above visual. These are:
- Passive Interest — This is the easiest level of engagement. It asks the least of your friends, and achieves the least commitment from us. But, it’s the crucial starting point. I follow my curiosity to you, I’m interested in what I find, and I choose to pay attention. This stage is epitomised by repeated visits to profiles, blog readers, and the so-called fans and followers.
- Active Interest — This is when I care enough to let you know that I care. It’s a small step, but a big opportunity for you to identify key members of your audience who are candidates to move along the spectrum. We don’t yet expect a response, we’re just letting you know that we’re listening. This is commonly experienced on Twitter, where you can respond to my tweets, even if I’m not actively following you. I can then decide whether you’re worth looking up. It’s really the starting point of a conversation;
Hey I’m interested in what you have to say, you may be interested in what I have to say.
- Sharing — At this point the audience member starts to become a fan. You and your work become part of my identity as I use it to talk to my own friends about what interests me. I also have made myself more valuable, because I am now partly responsible for the spread of your ideas. This is typified by retweeting comments and links, using social bookmarks to save useful web pages and posting references and content to my own websites and social network profiles.
- Public Dialogue — This is the first phase that requires action on your part. I have either demonstrated an Active Interest or have Shared your work with my own friends. You foster a relationship by responding to my interest in a public forum such as Twitter and to some extent Facebook. By doing so, you make the rest of your friends aware of my existence, and welcome me to the group. This is signalled by @replies in Twitter, referrals in a blog post, references posted on other [important] websites and profiles.
- Private Dialogue — At this step, we begin to transform mutual interest into mutual trust. This really is the “major hurdle” that has to be overcome for a “digital friendship” to really mimic those found in the real world. We are willing to share thoughts, ideas, experiences with each other directly. We trust each other with direct access, which has increasing value in an increasingly always-on world. Direct messages on Twitter are just the beginning. At this stage we freely exchange private contact details such as mobile phone number and email address, which allows us to take the conversation beyond the social networks and into a more intimate realm.
- Advocacy — At first glance, Advocacy looks a lot like Sharing. But, the crucial difference is that Advocacy means that I am making an explicit recommendation of you to my friends. I am in effect putting my reputation on the line for you; there is the implied understanding that with this recommendation comes the obligation not to let me down. It’s too easy now to simply share, all it takes is one click on your bookmark tool bar. Choosing to actually say, “This is important. It’s worth my friends’ time. And I’m willing to risk my own reputation to convince my friends to check it out.”
- Investment — The pinnacle of online friendship. This is the most difficult achievement to recognise or quantify. But it’s the most important because it represents the willingness of your friends to take action on your behalf. Investment may not be entirely altruistic since your wins may become my wins. It’s a little like the self-propagating “old boys” or alumni network, which, while sometimes seen in a negative light, are successful in maintaining and extending relationships.
Some people have several hundred Facebook friends, thousands of blog readers and tens of thousands of Twitter followers; I’m thinking more @stephenfry than @whatterz here! Where these relationships were once considered merely an audience, they are developing into what people are now considering as friendships. I’m not so sure friendship is really the right choice of noun quite yet, since offline interactions are still important, but people who can cultivate meaningful relationships online have a lot to teach not only other people, but brands who are trying to figure out how they fit into the world of social media.
The Ten Commandments of Social Media
Monday, 3rd August 2009 in Social Media by Simon | 8 comments
If you’ve ever wondered how to go about the whole social media , Lon Safko, author of the Social Media Bible suggests 10 commandments that go a long way to embracing the phenomenon:
Commandments 1. Thou Shalt Blog (like crazy)
Blogging, although possibly now considered is a first priority. , says Safko, There are a multitude of Blog providers and software for self-hosting. My clear favourite is WordPress, which provides a hosted solution much like Blogger.com or GoingOn.com, or in my case, the software to setup and manage your own blog.
Commandments 2. Thou Shalt Create Profiles (everywhere)
Create profiles on the websites that interest you; do it now before someone else takes them. Once they are gone, they are gone forever. That’s commonly called cyber squatting. So get out there. If you have a personal brand, set up all the profiles you can against that brand, alternatively just use your name. For example, You can see my Google and Facebook profiles, the later of which has allowed me my own distinct URL. You can see more of my profiles via the links in the footer of my website. For the technically-minded, you can use Open Social to make filling in your profiles as easy as a click of a button.
Commandments 3. Thou Shalt Upload Photos (lots of them)
Upload photographs. You’ve got them, afterall you probably own the latest and greatest digital SLR from Canon or Nikon. Don’t upload the one with you with a lampshade on your head, that’s somewhat counter-productive; but other photographs? Absolutely; show your creativity and interests. Customers want to see and participate. You want to give people a face to go with your company. Sites such as Flickr, known for hosting some stunning photographs, are regularly used as a private area through which not only photographs, but product designs can be discussed and developed with clients. Photobucket is another example, albeit more consumer orientated.
Commandments 4. Thou Shalt Upload Videos (all you can find)
Safko, like many others, sees videos becoming an important part of business interactions: Fortunately, much like the plethora of photo sites, there are some really great video websites out there. My favourite is Vimeo, but you could also use the more familiar and popular YouTube.
Commandments 5. Thou Shalt Podcast (often)
In my opinion this is a tricky one, much like video. Safko suggest But like video, people don’t necessarily have the time, budget or talent to produce relatively decent Podcasts. If you’re going to create decent Podcast, however, put them on iTunes where they can easily be found. If you have a smart phone, you could also try the AudioBoo and Qik, they are simply awesome at recording and publishing Podcasts and Videocasts respectively.
Commandments 6. Thou Shalt Set Alerts (immediately)
Set alerts. People are talking about you. You probably need to know what they are saying and you want to participate. A simple approach would be to use Google Alerts or Technorati and the soon-to-be-released Twitterati. If you have a greater concern, companies like Brandwatch dedicate their lives to spidering the web and garnering what they call company sentiment based upon conversations.
Commandments 7. Thou Shalt Comment (on a multitude of blogs)
says Safko, Many blogs allow comments and there is also a 3rd-party services, such as Disqus, that help you keep track of all your comments.
Commandments 8. Thou Shalt Get Connected (with everyone)
Get LinkedIn. Put it in your email that you have a LinkedIn account, you have a Facebook account, and that you have a Twitter account. Make it a part of your heading on your letterhead, because that’s how you propagate. That’s how you sell it.
Commandments 9. Thou Shalt Explore Social Media (30 minutes per week)
Explore social media. Safko suggests I would contend that 30 minutes per week isn’t enough. Spend 30 minutes per day, exploring and keeping up-to-date with what is happening out there in the big-bad-world.
There are tools that make this a lot easier; they’re called social media aggregation or lifestreaming. FriendFeed is one of the best social media aggregation and discussion tools available, with numerous widgets and 3rd-party applications. It currently supports more than 40 social media websites. SocialThing allows you to see everything that’s going on with your friends on all of your social networks and allows you to interact with multiple sites at one time. Importantly, SocialThing interacts with the 3rd-party APIs, so data is sent to the source service, unlike FriendFeed. Alternatively, Flock is a web browser with a built in social aggregator, which allows you to interact with sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It is not as wide reaching as its online rivals, but does boast a blog editor, drag-and-drop image uploading and an RSS aggregator.
Commandments 10. Thou Shalt Be Creative (go forth and create creatively)
Safko’s final commandment is all about creativity;