Joseph Hsu

Recently in my Communication in Organization, my professor Michael Stefanone mentioned he is cutting down his friendships on Facebook. His reasons being that with most of them, he isn’t anywhere closes to being friends with; he’s aiming for about 50 total friends. This brings about the question…

Is a friend on Online the same as IRL?

Friendship Offline

Friendship, as defined by Fehr in “Reflect & Relate” by Steven McCornack:

a voluntary interpersonal relationship in which the people involved like each other and enjoy each other’s company. — Fehr, 1996, 2000

The main points being that friends are voluntary and there is a mutual liking. I believe the most minimal requirements to be friends are: the two must have awareness of each other and mutual liking.

Friendship Online (according to social networks)

First, let’s look at what social networks like to call our connections with others:

When you join a social network and start adding people to your network, they presume that you are friends by using an “add friend” button. Though, they may be wording it this way to incite social behavior or simply that they originally didn’t predict the friending frenzy that Myspace brought.

Inside of social networks, we are ment to be social. Isn’t that the whole point? You add the people you know IRL, but is that it? True, we add those that are in our social circle and they are geographically clustered which means we most likely we have met them in person, but we also search for those with similar interests to expand our networks.

The problem with using “friends” to label connections is that it assumes us to have some sort of mutual relationship, sometimes our connection is the first communication.

Friendships online and offline are not the same. Social networks label connections/relationships online as friends (eg. “add as friend”), but do they intend to use the word’s denotative meaning?

So… Should We Limit the Term “Friends” Online to that of Offline Friends?

Obviously not. Just because they use the word “friends” in the app, does not mean your network has to consist of friends only. The connection itself represents an opportunity to build or maintain a relationship.

So add whoever you want, go crazy! Just make sure you add with the intention of following up. Build relationships. Just remember, it’s not about numbers (unless you’re talking about money), it’s the relationships that come.

When Building Your Network

Remember: While it isn’t a game of numbers, building connections are important to start and maintain relationships.

Other Resources

• Changing the way I use Twitter… by Kevin Lim
• Do you have the Social Media Disease by Keith Burtis
• What’s the difference between offline and online friends
• The blurry line between online and real life friendships

UPDATE: There’s a good article about friendships and Facebook over on the Huffington Post titled “Are Facebook Friends ‘Real’ Friends?”