DISQUS

famebook · 11 months ago

Definition of 'FRIEND' - Jan's Social Networking Dictionary - Entry One!
friend - Pronunciation [frend] – noun

1. a person identified by a small image which they alone believe best describes them; a person who totally loves you even though you are blue and shaped like a question mark, a cold girl in a bikini
2. a person who is connected to lots of other useful FRIENDS or at least Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington
3. a person who has super poked your wife; a person who pokes many people.. esp. other friends: I know your Wife! Will you be my FRIEND?
4. a friend of your friend’s friend. Who the F**K are you?…I am your FRIEND
5. a person who follows you everywhere with lots of their friends. (PLU) What’s that tweeting noise in my ear? We are your FRIENDS!
6. a collection of people that you don't know but adore...up to a maximum of 5000. I would like to be your FRIEND? F.O.A.D., I have too many FRIENDS

– verb (used with object)

6. Rare. to befriend. Michael Arrington has added you as a FRIEND! Please click IGNORE or CONFIRM to BEFRIEND him!

— Idiom

7. make friends with, to enter into friendly relations with; become a friend to; be confirmed; invited to poke; followed;
________________________________________
Origin: bef. 900; fb friend, frendster, OE frēond friend, lover, relative, twit, tweet, twat, twot, follower, deviant, stranger, frendfeeder (c. OS friund, OHG friunt (G Freund), Goth frijōnds), orig. prp. of frēogan, c. Goth frijōn to love someone you've never met
http://famebook.typepad.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the JAN SIMMONDS Social Networking Dictionary, © @famebook, Inc. 2008.

tyfn · 11 months ago

I don't even know how many friends I have on Facebook. I don't focus on numbers but on using Facebook mostly for maintaining/building meaningful relationships with close friends. I use it as a personal space rather than focus on adding as many people as possible. I would have no problem sharing my home address or mobile number with any of my friends on Facebook.

I'm a student. I've never heard anyone brag about the number of FB friends they have on campus. Facebook = Internet, you add people that you meet at parties or friends you work with on a group project, or people you hang with at your part-time job. Boasting about the number of friends one has would just seem weird, like boasting about how much money your family has or how many cars you have at home.

Andrew Mirsky · 11 months ago

Great post Nick. This reminded me of when I was in college (back in the day) and we used to rate people on how many parties they knew about on a saturday night. Yes, seriously. I got this amazing reputation among my friends for, just ONE weekend, knowing about 4 parties. But it also reminds me of the people I know who are always looking around when you're talking with them. Ok, I'm sometimes guilty of this, and it's a terrible thing. You're so concerned with what ELSE is going on, that you don't see what's right in front of you.

No, this isn't an old-man rant against "you kids, you don't know how good you have it!" No, not at all. I am aware, though, of an inability to take advantage - to good ends - of having such a large network, be it online or offline. Facebook friend-making ability makes this just more of a problem than previously in magnified ways. My friends and I have taken to distinguish between "friends" and "facebook friends", to make the same point.

But like so many evolving technologies and social customs - and social networking definitely is still very much evolving - this is still really wild, wild west, as noted by your quotes ("“We have to do it in the Facebook, with the Twittering.”). That's hilarious!

What to make of all of this? Well, that's really the question, still.

Tom Ribbens · 11 months ago

While I have relatively a lot of Facebook friends, and I would not call most of them real friends, I do really know who they all are, and in 99% of the cases have talked with them offline. For Facebook, that is my criteria to ask to friend someone there.

Other sites, like Twitter and Friendfeed, are different for me. Where Facebook is for (re)connecting to existing contacts, these others are a way to talk to new people.

Suzanne Lainson · 11 months ago

I've run band sites on MySpace. In the early days, the game had been to add as many friends as possible to show the music industry how popular you were. But once automated friend adders were developed and a no-talent band could easily rack up 20,000 friends, numbers of friends became pretty meaningless. And the more fake friends you had, the more spam you had to deal with.

I've gotten into Facebook relatively recently. I add friends as they are suggested by Facebook's "People You May Know" list. If I see a logical connection, I'll send a friend request. If I don't see any real connection, I won't request an add. Similarly, if people approach me first and if I don't know them and they don't explain a connection and I don't see one, I won't add them.

I've got quite a few Facebook friends now, virtually all of them I genuinely want to follow. What will keep me from going after sheer numbers of people on Facebook is that I actually read everything that shows up via the Live Feed. I pay attention to what everyone is doing. Since I don't have unlimited time or interest to follow the masses, I don't see myself going after numbers just to have numbers. I don't know what my upper limit on Facebook friends will be, but I guess I will find out at some point.

As a writer, I certainly don't mind having an audience, and I'll definitely seek out opportunities to be read, but if I am implying that I am available for a dialogue, I will try to be available.

Vitak · 11 months ago

Research conducted at MSU has found that after a certain point (in the case of this study, the difference between having 300 and 500 friends), people's impressions of users as socially attractive begin to decrease, suggesting that you really can have too many friends on a SNS. Once your numbers get too high (assuming you're just a regular person and not a web "celebrity"), you just look like a friend whore.

Here's a link to the citation and abstract, for any who are interested:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/1194...

DjMikeNIke · 5 months ago

I Have 4,399 Yea Buddy

Facebook.com/DjMikeNIke

Colormaniacs · 4 weeks ago

If you realy want to know who has the most friends on facebook, check this application:
http://apps.facebook.com/themostfirends/

It classify users according to the number of friends they have.