Analysis is a good thing. It’s always smart to step back from something grand and review the who, what, why, when, where and how. That’s how I operate 99% of the time. I’m constantly in reflection and constantly fighting headaches of information and analysis overload.

Today I read this post co-authored by one of my favorite bloggers, Chris Brogan, which explores the nature and implications surrounding following/friending individuals in social networks. Although many of the points are valid, I found myself mid-entry battling one of those headaches caused by information overload. I definitely agree that social mores on social networks are still being defined and that the desire to be perceived as nice might influence an individual’s decision to friend or follow another individual. But are we over complicating the friending/following issue? Is there even a problem here that requires solving?

I think that the real point here is that until there are defined social network mores, a lot of our behaviors within these networks are open to the interpretation of the others in that network. Trying to identify all the possible interpretations is a losing battle of time and sanity (for me anyways). So here are what I deem to be fair assumptions in terms of friending/following behaviors in social networks.

Fair Assumptions in Friending/Following

1. A friend request on Facebook is different from following someone on Twitter. A friend request on Facebook or MySpace is like a direct message on Twitter. It’s direct, it’s singular, and it is designed to illicit a direct response. Following someone on Twitter is like an indirect friend request. The implication is that if I choose to follow you, I would like you to follow me, but I’m not directly asking.
2. Denying a friend request is more personal than choosing not to follow someone on Twitter. This seems logical given the nature of each networks’ approach to friending/following. The more personal the more the rejection will sting.
3. Nobody likes rejection. Some of us go to therapy to figure out why we need others to accept us and like us (this includes me), but one thing we all have in common is the desire to be liked. It’s human nature. This desire isn’t left behind when we venture online, although it is transformed in much the same way that the definition of a ‘friend’ within any given online network is much different from the offline definition of ‘friend.’ It would follow that the sting of rejection is muted in online spaces, because the connection isn’t as strong (unless the online friend is the offline friend).
4. The niceties involved in friending/following are directly correlated to an individual’s own expectations of their network. I tend to follow people who follow me not because I’m nice but because I would want someone I follow to follow me back, especially for the sake of the conversation. I can only assume that those who don’t follow everyone that follows them have a particular logic or reasoning behind their decisions, and that they would expect the same treatment from people in their respective networks.

This is how I make sense of it all. What’s your take?

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