The purpose of this post is mainly to reiterate everything I said before in “It’s All About Connections“ (i.e., how there are many kinds of “friends” with differing levels of intimacy and “trustedness,” and how online social networks have barely scraped the surface of that simple fact) … and to add two items:
1) For quite a while now, Facebook has had the following feature listed as being “In The Works:”
Sort out your friends. We’ll let you organize that long list of friends into groups so you can decide more specifically who sees what.
While I look forward to more differentiation among what constitutes a “friend” for the purpose of living in the fishbowl of Web 2.0 existence and being a selective exhibitionist, what would be even more useful is if…
2) Wouldn’t it be great if Facebook, and especially LinkedIn, allowed you to control which friends you get regular updates about (or which ones get priority listing)?
See, the emphasis shouldn’t just be on how much of yourself you’re willing to share with certain groups of people, but also on how much attention you want to give back. I mean, I should only be so lucky to have so many friends that I would need to prioritize them, and the few social network connections that I do have are nothing but profound (*ahem*), however, I imagine that are quite a few social animals out there (none of whom would have time to read this blog, of course), who would benefit from such a thing as “updates regarding your close friends and colleagues” versus “updates regarding your casual acquaintances.”
Just as relationships are a two-way street, so too are the ideas of differentiation & prioritization in relationships.
 SOME PEOPLE CALL ME “DANNY” |
 SOME PEOPLE CALL ME “DAN” |
Filed under: LinkedIn, Social Media
lol i havent seen “Danny” in ages!!!