The Problems With Friends Lists

A basic marketing tenant is that it's a lot more cost effective to get more out of your current customers than to find new ones. I think the same is true of friends. Friends have friends who have friends. The only way I'd unfriend someone is if they proved to be someone I did not want to be associated with. I might hide them, or filter them, but I wouldn't unfriend them. I think that if a study were to be done, there's a direct correlation between earning potential and numbers of friends since they represent a sphere of influence that generally translates into money somewhere along the way.

Reminds me of the Seinfeld episode “#1 on Speed Dial” .. don't assign too much to other org plans

Had a similar discussion with Julien a couple of weeks ago when he was in Ottawa.

I try to keep my friends in Facebook and my business connections in LinkedIn. There is always some crossover. That's fine because who wants to totally pidgeon-hole the people in your life.

Facebook fan pages are good for politicians, entertainers, artists, high-profile people. If my networks ever expand, maybe I'll try one.

This is a good point and reminds me of an article I read in Wired a while back. The main point of the article is that social networking sites do not (yet) follow the lifeline of real relationships. The author proposed a system where the icons of your friends would shrink over time and eventually disappear if there is not some sort of interaction. An automated process would remove the emotional aspects of defriending or being defriended and.

Chris, I think part of this comes down to the actual reasons people have friended you. I connected with you on LinkedIn earlier this year after reading your blog, and then realized, hey, I can get a tremendous amount out of this “relationship” with Chris by subscribing to his email blasts and his blog's rss feed, buying his books, and attending conferences where he's a speaker or organizer.

when i met you at the inbound marketing summit in foxboro a couple months ago i was thinking, wow, for a marketing and social networking rockstar, that chris brogan is really a nice, down to earth guy. but it never occurred to me to friend you on facebook. i guess because i get what i need out of our connection via the stuff i mentioned above.

one day, sure, if we actually did get to know each other pretty well, and it made sense, I'd welcome a facebook friendship with you, but for now “our relationship” as it is works great for me – i get everything i need from you via your emails, blog posts, videos, books, speaking engagements, etc., and you get a supporter and evangelist for your efforts. (and a friend in New Orleans if you're ever down this way).

the last thing i'd add is that while you are incredibly down to earth and personable, your celebrity status has helped make “the idea of Chris Brogan” or “Chris Brogan the brand” bigger in some ways than the actual guy. and people who don't know you personally see you on facebook and naturally want to be your friend.

but it almost seems like they'd be better served on facebook in this scenario if you created a Page, totally separate from, and in addition to your main profile (assuming Facebook would cut you some slack there) that spoke more to the reasons these people were friending you in the first place. That way they could sign up as FANS instead of friends, and you could have an unlimited number of them. The relationships here would also be a little better defined and everyone would hopefully get more out of them.

and you wouldn't feel bad about cutting some of your “friends” who are actually more like fans than friends.

You're completely right that it becomes emotional – all relationships carry some emotion, but as others have noted here, the word “friend” is completely loaded. Think of kids – one day, your own child is likely to be crying because “Billy said he's not gonna be my friend anymore!” So, this is one of the earliest key emotional touchstones we have in relationships… and even though friends on a social networks should “seem” different, it still carries that hint of what we've known forever. The flip side of that, of course, is that we love the positive connotation of having hundreds or thousands of people who want our friendship… even though we also know that it's not the same thing as real-world friendship.

Our friend behaviors do more than match what the software developers dictate – they're impacted by all sorts of societal norms and pressures. It's possible to match one to the other – you can use a network just for real world friends, after all – but for anyone trying to grow a network or just interested in connecting with lots of fascinating people, it's gonna cause problems. I'm not sure where the solutions are, either, because I suspect you can't “solve” emotions via technology. But certainly there will be ways to smooth some of the rougher edges.

I think Facebook used to have a feature that allowed one to tailor their feed (ie: See more of Friend A and see less of Friend B.) It was nice while it lasted.

Your “low interaction” group seems like a way to segregate a group of friends into an “acquantance” outer circle. How is this working out for you?

I believe the experience is different for people that have smaller lists. With 5,000+ “friends” I can imagine that “defriending” is a necessary process to make the tool useful for YOU and not just your audience.

My experience is a lot different. I would say that I know or have met 95% of the people on my friends list. The 5% that I haven't met, I've accepted on my list because I'd like to know them “on a social/personal” level or have future plans to meet them. Then, there are 1 or 2 businesses that use the FB personal profile instead of the fan page (for whatever reason). Bottom line is that I know exactly who's on my friends list. It's a manageable # that is much less than 500 or 300.

I use the “lists” feature to indicate if I know them personally or professionally. And now the new Facebook privacy feature (for status messages) allows me to post messages specifically to my “strictly professional” list. Previously, I'd restricted my status messages from this group because I primarily use Facebook for social (as in socializing) purposes. I use my company FB page to distribute messages pertaining to my business or my industry. I like it this way, as there is little confusion and drama around my friends list. LOL. But I can imagine that my process would drive someone with 1,000+ “friends” crazy. But this works quite well for me. I use Facebook as a tool to connect with people that I know or will get to know on a personal level. And I plan to keep it that way.

I can't wait to hear your additional thoughts re: social databases.

I think the difficulty, as many people already have mentioned, is what we use our various social networks for. I use facebook to keep track of people that I am currently close to or have been at some point in the past. There are friends on there from elementary school who I rarely interact with, but I now have a contact option should I wish to reach out with them at some point. Case in point. I sang with a group in high school, and after receiving a group message regarding the death of our choir teacher, we decided that this christmas we would all get together for a reunion in his honor. This would not have been possible if we didn't have a system that allows us to reach out to the members of this group in an interface they actually use, even though I haven't talk with many of them in years.

The difficulty I see is with the limited filter options for the newsfeed. I want to have a better UI to decide who shows up in the newsfeed. I appreciate the new attempted algorithm to choose a limited number to occur in the newsfeed (vs. the live feed), but ultimately I see it as a flawed system for two reasons: 1. I haven't found a very good way to filter when I access my news through an app outside of facebook. 2. there are some people who I don't interact with on facebook often, but I'm interested in what they post. I want to a good UI to be able to choose that. My sister, for example, is someone that I talk to on the phone all the time, but if she posts a picture of her new baby, I want to know, even though we don't interact all that much on facebook.

I think the difficulty is that facebook has become an address book for many of us. I don't want to lose that functionality, but i want better choices regarding who I listen to and pay attention to in that address book.

With unlimited ability to add friends, I agree with zamolxis – let your network grow and use sorting tools to manage the hose. Seems like the Trust Agent thing to do, no?

So this becomes a Facebook-specific problem with a cap on 5000 friends. For Chris Brogan, this becomes a scarcity issue and it shouldn't be. But then Facebook is only recently expanding out of its own walled garden, so maybe this will change too like the new push to gently push users to keep their profiles public.

I know you're speaking about Facebook, Chris, but in much the same way, being dropped or even blocked by someone on Twitter can also teach us something that we would totally accept in real-life social settings but that we sometimes don't want to accept online: that there are consequences to what you say.

The only time I've ever been blocked by someone on Twitter came as a result of my making what I thought was an innocent, jokey comment, that was taken the wrong way by someone who thought it made assumptions about them I had no business making. I thought I was “friends” with this person, but in fact had to admit afterward that a dozen tweets and a couple blog comments doesn't make you “friends” with anyone.

The end result was that the person didn't want to pursue even a casual acquaintance and there was nothing I could do or say to change that fact.

Was I misunderstood? Absolutely. Was the other person justified in not wanting to listen to my excuses? Absolutely. If the same comment had been made in a face-to-face scenario, would the misunderstanding have occurred? Highly unlikely.

It was a painful lesson for me to learn, but one I think we all need to be mindful of.

With regards to:

– There’s no real clustering that says “I’m spending more time and interest on these friends,” and yet, that’s how we do what we do as humans. –

That actually could be a cluster easily put together on Facebook or Twitter. If you've got 20 or 50 friends that you spend the most time with / have the most interest in, then a “list” for those folks on Facebook would work very well. More and more third party devices let you do this kind of thing with Twitter as well. These filters definitely let you streamline the info coming your way.

Kind of true for any relationship really. If you end a romantic relationship or business relationship, it always hits the person that is being severed harder then the person severing.

Actually, I do find it painful to remove friends. Sometimes someone I've friended states beliefs that are just too far outside my comfort zone. I like being exposed to a wide variety of beliefs, but I bristle when someone tries to force theirs on me…and they are likely to get unfriended if it happens more than a few times. But I'm never comfortable doing it,

Thank you nolafilm for the book recommendation. I should check it out.

I can't help but think you could have done something differently, Chris.

To the casual onlooker, it looks like you're saying “Thanks for getting me to where I am today, but I no longer need you because we haven't spoken/interacted in a while”.

Does that mean you have to “get rid” of people? Why not suggest they move over to the fan page? Or use your community to petition Facebook to look at its user experience (heck, it worked for Jeff Jarvis and Dell).

I may not read Trust Agents for a few months, or even over a year. So should I throw it out because I haven't interacted with it for so long, or keep it nearby in case I want to dip back in, say “Hello” and gain knowledge from it?

Make sense? :)

Yep, software makes us do things differently. some times the things a tool like Twitter forces us to do helps us think differently and other times certain limitations hold us back from really making use of the tools.

Filtering, grouping, etc… is KEY, but I wish there was a more simple way to have it done for you. i.e. the grouping by location. it would be great if Facebook just did that. facebook could also group by high school, work, etc…

I like Twitter lists in concept, but i seem to shy away from the public nature of them for some reason. i use seesmic and do grouping in the app – this way no one takes something the wrong way.

At the end of the day “friends” on the web and friends in real life go through cycles. one year you might be in constant contact with a person. the next year they might move so you interact much less. on the web one year you might make a connection with someone for a specific reason that keeps you in close communication/interaction. the next year that reason might go away so you end up interacting less.

All that said, when deep and meaningful relationships are created all lists go out the window. Those are the folks you just live and go through life with. You can pick up where ever you left off even if 5 years past between meeting.

good stuff Chris.

http://twitter.com/franswaa

I just had to place this comment because after reading this post you have answered the vast majority of questions that I had in my mind about this particular topic.

Thank You

Mark

motherfucker

Mbt trainers are pro-body shoes. try to put on a pair of Mbt m walk, you will fall love with Mbt.

At times I do go through all my connections, friends and followers and see who is who and some of the people I do delete. For me I want to make have true relationships with people. Not just some random that wants to be my friend because he thinks I am pretty. LOL It comes in handy to have the real relationships. Sure you can build the relationships up, but hey not everyone needs to be in your network.
I have these talks with girlfriends of mine about ex-dates, or boyfriends if we should keep them linked into our personal public lives and its a difficult thing to decide. Hmmmm All in all some people I do keep because you never know when you will need them and others not because its not necessary.

Does that make sense :)

Joseph. I like that school of thought about the 2years unused. I am going
to apply that to alot of things as I clean up my workspace, and get ready
for 2010. The same applies to social network friends.

Great info. I already do most of this but I am going to check the one’s that I missed. Definitely going to send this to all my Facebook friends. It’s a must read.