Friendship in a Web 2.0 World – How Social Networks Have Redefined Friendship

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately.

My tech event buddy and bub.blicio.us photographer Brian Caldwell recently posted a question on LinkedIn Answers “How do you define “friend” these days?”

Now Brian is a highly intelligent uber-geek, LinkedIn 500+ power user and tech event social butterfly. His blog sports an entire community of users and his posts get more comments that his total number of published articles. So I was surprised to find that he felt a twinge of loneliness in his socially networked hi-tech world.

Me: “Dude, you know so many people.”

Him: “They’re all mostly acquaintances. I have no friends!”

Me: “What are you talking about? I’ll be your friend. Turn off your computer, get out of your house, and no, don’t buy Halo 3.”

As we mused about the concept of friendship in a Web 2.0 world, it became clear to us that it all boils down to time. Authentic, real-life relationships take time and effort, and when you’re spread too thin in a hectic, modern world, it’s hard to cultivate meaningful friendships.

True friendship requires real-time time shared experiences

Yet it’s all very weird, because, online, my number of friends seems to be exponentially growing, with little to no effort on my part. Thanks to the social media revolution, all of sudden, people I’ve never met are connecting to me as friends, through shared interests and online community participation, in addition to the spam factor. Friends that have fallen out of touch for years, are finding me on Facebook in droves. In fact, my Facebook profile has a more active social life than I do.

My infrequent Twitters have gathered a following. The growth of my LinkedIn Network has been on autopilot, increasing at a steady 10 connections a week, allowing me access to a whopping 1.7m people.

Web 2.0 has Redefined Friendship

Social networks have redefined friendship and the way we connect to each other, allowing us to maintain more relationships over time with a lot less effort than before.

According to Stowe Boyd:

[T]he new nature of connected friendship is taking on the shape of the Web itself:

1. it is increasingly open (much of our fraternizing is in public),
2. tolerant of diversity (I disagree publicly with my friends, but I accept this as part of friendship, not a blind gang-like sharing of narrow perspectives; and they are from all over, all colors, all shapes and sizes)
3. bottom-up (its not because we work together, or because we are members of some organized group)
4. personal (I don’t belong to cliques, but am connected to individuals)
5. flowing (people’s relationships are constantly changing, and shifting in complexity).

Many would look at the new state of friendship and suggest that something has been lost when you don’t have a small group of friends that all know each other, that invite each other over to bbqs every weekend, and who all attended the same schools, workplaces, and places of worship. But I believe that we are moving away from a narrow, parochial, and inbred sort of friendship.

We look to ourselves — and our networks of contacts — to make sense of the world that confronts us, and we define right and wrong based on the meaning we find through personal affiliation, connection, and commitment.

Indeed, the enhanced connectivity that social networks afford, breaks down traditional models of friendship that are based on physical proximity, allowing individuals to connect more so than ever on shared interests, globally. Geographic boundaries to friendship have been completely broken down.

Online friends from Tribe.net, enjoy beers in Iquitos, Peru, where we are attending a conference on Amazonian shamanism.

Have Social Networks Improved the Quality of Friendships?

Anne Truitt Zelenka, editor of Web Worker Daily, believes that friendships in the connected age are both higher in quantity and in quality.

More connectedness suddenly jumps us to a totally different curve of friendship quality vs. friendship quantity. You can stay in touch with many more people. You can give specially targeted support because you understand much better the contours and context of each friend’s life. You can connect and communicate with much less trouble than before, because you know when your friends are available and how best to reach them.

To a certain agree, I would agree with Anne. I look at my own life, I would describe friendship as a moving train. People get on, people get off. Except now, rather than disappearing from my life, they linger on the periphery, like a constellation of stars that I can, thanks to the social web, reach out and touch if the need or desire arises.

My web-unsavvy friends however, run the real risk of dropping out of my life – as people move, phone numbers and emails change. But these people are a minority these days. Overall, my net of friendship is cast wider, further, and stays intact much longer, and all of the sudden, I have friends, lots of friends who I’ve known for years. I derive a sense of comfort to know that all these people, with whom I’ve shared experiences and a connection, albeit for a moment in time, are still, somehow, in my life, although on the far, outer periphery of it.

Which would you prefer? Meeting up with virtual friends in a digital world, or enjoying fine tea and fine company in nature?

Have Social Networks Contributed to the Declining Quality of Friendship?

In his article “The Web Changes How We Define Friendship“, Steve Rubel ponders how friendship will look like in 10 years. While he recognizes that current Web technologies help scale friendship it in quantity and allows us to spread our networks spread far and wide, he juxtaposes this development with the observation that friendship is declining in quality.

Steve refers to a Wikipedia article on the Decline of Friendship, which states that, according to a 2006 study, “the number and quality of friendships for the average American has been declining since at least 1985. According to the study, “25% of Americans have no close confidants, and that the average total number of confidants per person has dropped to 2.” Steve, however, does not do much more than ponder whether the social web might have contributed to this trend.

Whether or not increasing connectivity is responsible for the declining quality of friendship, a recent study shows that heavy online users still possess the same number of close friends as the average person.

According to the ScienceDaily article Is Social Networking Changing The Face Of Friendship? the average person has a social network of around 150 friends, ranging from very close friends to casual acquaintances. However according to research by Dr Will Reader and colleagues of Sheffield Hallam University, online users say they have about the same number of close friends as the real-life average person. Furthermore, face-to-face encounters are still the most important factor in close friendships.

Why is this?

Making friends can be costly, according to behavioural ecologists. While it might not be a very romantic view of friendship, making new friends involves an investment by committing time and energy to another person in the hope that they will provide reciprocal benefits in the future.

According to Dr Reader, face-to-face encounters are necessary in order to gather honest information about the individual. This honest information helps us decide whether that person merits the risk of our investment of time, energy, and trust into that friendship.

The importance of honest signals is a fundamental concept in behavioural ecology. For example, a female song bird invests in a mate based on the quality of his voice, as this is an honest signal indicating the fitness of the bird. In the same way, people choose friends based on their “quality”, and this can only be assessed when there are honest signals being given.

“It’s easier to spot honest signals when meeting someone face-to-face using facial and bodily cues,” explained Dr Reader, “whereas it’s harder to spot dishonest signals online.”

The truth is, people present themselves very differently online than in real life. It’s hard to know if your cyber-friend is indeed who he or she claims to be. The Web allows you recreate yourself in whatever fashion you choose, so many people adopt multiple personalities and create a multitude of avatars. Companies routinely create profiles and join networks in order to seed forum discussions with buzz about their products. Six of your virtual friends may, in fact, really be one person.

In a Web 2.0 world, friendship abounds. The social web has lowered the bar to friendship, allowing anyone to add anybody for any reason as a “friend”. However the more time we spend online in a race to acquire the most amount of friends (whoever dies with the most friends wins), the less time we spend cultivating authentic, real-life relationships. I believe that this can ultimately hurt us as individuals, and a society as a whole.

Why?

Friendship is a Component of Human Happiness

During my lunch break, I recently asked a co-worker Kay, who happens to be 90 years old, what she found to be the key to happiness in life. She immediately said, “Friends and family.” Then she went on to grumble on for the next hour how her friends have let her down.

People matter in life. Human beings are social animals, and thus the presence of rewarding friendships and family relationships bring a real quality of happiness, love, connectedness, joy, gratitude, fulfillment, etc, into our lives. These experiential qualities fail to traverse the vast barrier of cyberspace that separate us from our online connections, since, we, in truth, are relating more to our computer screens than the actual person beyond it.

Social networking sites don’t allow us to engage in acts of generosity, indulge in shared laughter, experience tenderness or love. Online communities and virtual friendships will never substitute real-life communities and face-to-face relationships.

Even social networking sites like Dogster, Catster, and Hamsterster – which enable your pet to make online friends – will never truly replicate the beauty of inter-species friendships.

Effective Social Design Can Strengthen Real-Life Communities

We run the risk of spending far too much time online indulging in virtual interactions with fake people. Because our legion of online friends require so little maintenance, we run the risk of reducing the amount of effort we spend cultivating lasting, authentic relationships with real people. For this reason, social networking sites can serve to emphasize the social problems we are facing, such as loneliness, isolation, and lack of trust.

However, social networks can enhance our lives and happiness if used skillfully or designed skillfully. By bringing people together in real-time, based on shared interests, social networks that have been designed to include an offline component, like Upcoming.org or Meetup.com have a real ability to strengthen local communities and create new, real-life friendships.

Facebook and LinkedIn communities are made up of profiles that overwhelmingly represent real people. Their user agreements mandate that in order to participate, your profile must be you. Both Facebook and LinkedIn ask friends and connections to validate each other which makes it hard to maintain a fake persona for long. For this reason, these social networks have attained a high degree of trust, which in turn, enhances the sites’ stickiness and growth.

What is “True Friendship” in a Web 2.0 World?

Thanks, to the social media revolution, never before have I had so many friends, indeed, friends who’ve I’ve never even met, friends I don’t need to meet, call, or email. Yet, amidst the abundance of friends, the question arises – who are my true friends?

In order to answer this question, I needed to come up with a definition of true friend. For this I turned to my friend and close confident Vanessa Silva, whose relationship skills, generous nature, and warm, welcoming presence tend to make her central hub for a wide community of diverse individuals.

She said, “True friends show up when you need them.”

I think a really good litmus test for true friendship would be the drop-dead factor.

I wonder, if I were to suddenly drop dead, who would know? Would my online friends even notice? My Facebook profile certainly would carry on by itself as if nothing happened.

Who is engaged enough in my life who would wonder why I have suddenly disappeared from the scene and moreover, care enough shift their routine to check up on me? The only people who would know would still be my family and close confidants – relationships that thrive entirely offline.

Now in answer to your question, Brian:

A true friend will take you in at 11pm when you’re having a day from hell and let you smoke his last cigarette.

[tags]friendship, web 2.0, social networking sites, social networks, social web, social networks redefine friendship, stowe boyd, anne truitt zelenka, steve rubel, lorna li, lornali[/tags]

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5. Buzz Marketing Through Social Media – What this Means for Search Engine Marketers

8 Responses to “Friendship in a Web 2.0 World – How Social Networks Have Redefined Friendship”

1. Brian Caldwell Says:
   October 7th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

   additional words cannot do justice as a reply to this fantastic wording of the feelings many people are having regarding the state of friendship in 2007.

   well said lorna, if either of us drops dead tonight we can rest easy.

   - your friend Brian

2. Patty Nason Says:
   October 7th, 2007 at 11:06 pm

   Woof! This is a great post on a subject I’m really familiar with, and agree with in many ways. I often get burned out on social networking and all of the profiles to manage! I work for Dogster, and I think the thing that’s great about social networking is the potential to meet people and create friendships with them around shared interests. Many of our members meet up in person with their dogs, and create real friendships. I think when social networking can be used as a tool to find new friends that you could meet in person, then it’s great – since those are people you wouldn’t have likely met without the tool.

   Thanks for mentioning us, and for your thoughtful post!

   Woof!

3. san Says:
   October 8th, 2007 at 10:56 am

   great post – thanks for the thoughts – i think true friends are true friends when u are able to maintain ur frienship both on and offline. i have few – not many. and i’m treasuring them.

4. Biff Says:
   October 11th, 2007 at 5:18 pm

   Hi Lorna,

   Without a doubt one of the most thought out and well written posts on this subject that I have yet read. Your definition of a true friend is spot on. Someone who will BE THERE for you, and you for them.

   Online, it is hard to define ‘friend’. I would say that a better word would be ‘contact’…although that seems a little cold.

   We here at Naked have been thinking about how to make online socialising more representative of offline life, and came up with Open Messaging (if you are interested in reading about it just follow the URL in the title of this comment, I write about it there.)

   I think a lot of what is happening is down to the sheer flow of people and information into this new world of public socialising. The waters are bubbling and there’s big waves. I can’t wait to see what the landscape looks like when it’s calmed down a little, and how many people we call ‘friends’ then…

   Cheers,

   ~biff~

5. lorna Says:
   October 15th, 2007 at 6:42 am

   Interesting project, Biff. Good luck with addressing people’s desire for closeness between friends, family and acquaintances with Open Messaging.

6. Vanessa Silva Says:
   October 16th, 2007 at 12:38 am

   Great essay, Lorna! Funny that because I only knew you on the flesh-and-bone world and now feel that there is a whole other layer to our friendship – the virtual one.
   Every once in a while I compare my number of tribe friends to the number that other people have in my community, and I hate to say that often i feel I am loosing on the head count. That always leads me to wonder about how do they do that, how can they keep so many ‘friendships’ going. It almost feels like the third wave of feminine liberation to me: we first took care of family, then we got the right to work out of the house, now we have accumulated the duties of nurturing family, kicking ass at work, and cultivating a whole virtual community and social life. Can be overwhelming at times. Personally, I think of myself as a sensualist, and for that, I need real human interaction. It is not enough for me to catch up with friends by text messaging, blogging, or email. I need a one-on-one dinner date, a drink or perhaps an urban hike around Dolores park. That takes time, and it steals time from my blogging, or updating my Flickr albuns. But that is my choice, to be an old-fashioned modern woman and keep both a LinkedIn profile and a pencil and paper pen-pal.

7. lorna Says:
   October 16th, 2007 at 1:28 am

   Yes Vanessa,

   It’s hard to balance online social activity and real-life social activity as there’s only enough time in the day. I just did a relationship workshop this weekend where women got to bathe in the compliments of authentic male appreciation. Just receiving another’s undivided attention, touch, and emotional support was nourishing and uplifting. Far more than what pixels can convey.

   Yes, I to am a sensualist. I certainly would pick a real live shoulder rub over online sex any day.

8. Friend Adder Elite Says:
   December 28th, 2008 at 7:39 am

   Very well said, this is a must read to people who are active in social networking, nowadays virtual friendship is as common as the term “friendship” that we’re all used to.

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