The Value of Friendship

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Friendship has been a core value for many people but these days it is being redefined by social media. I think most notoriously for a majority of users is the Facebook friend count – a quick check of my profile and I have 597 “friends”. It’s wonderful to know I’m so popular but the vast majority of those I am not actively looking to talk to.

I am much more of a fan of the Twitter follower model, where you can follow those who you are interested in, and those who are interested in you can follow you. There is no need for a two way relationship and I find myself following (and every so often un-following) random strangers who have piqued my interest.

This all sprang to mind as I received a Facebook friend request at the weekend from someone I don’t know. She at least went to school in my home town, and we have eight mutual “friends” but I don’t recognise her and I find myself reticent to allow her into my network. On Twitter I know that of the several hundred people I am now following, I have met in person only a handful (though Twestival in London helped increase that number a shade). Even on Facebook I know there are plenty of people that I have added myself, simply because I want to network with them. There are people past and present on my course I wouldn’t choose to go for a pint with, but knowing that we will all be progressing through the same industry at the same time it could be useful to have a way of contacting them at some point. Here in France (and I’ll try and extract another post about that soon) Facebook has been a great way to find ways of contacting others and I find myself adding anyone I speak to, reminiscent of my early days on the social network. And I’m very honoured to know a great many beautiful ladies, who make up a tranche of my friendship number because being young, single and male I won’t remove them.

But here I am, wondering whether to let this stranger join my network. I think the problem is control. As Facebook themselves have recently discovered to their cost and quickly back tracked on, people need to feel they have control on their information. This is why there was a mini storm regarding Google Latitude. The fear mongers who were putting out this kind of story obviously had not tried out the software or asked any questions of it. Those who have looked know that only people I actively share my location with can see it and at any time I can set my location manually or simply hide my location. So I am happy to put my information out there, but I want to know it’s only going to the people that I at least acknowledge I don’t mind it going to. I have control.

So, hypocritical though it maybe, request denied.