1. Follow vs. Friend

    Our online world was dominated by mutual connections before Twitter came around.  Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn have all operated under this model:

    • Person A invites person B to connect
    • Person B gets an email, clicks the link, then clicks accept
    • Person A and B are now connected to each other

    Twitter flipped this on its head and allowed you to connect to someone without them connecting to you - better known as “following” someone.

    On Facebook, you connect with who you know.  On Twitter, you connect with who you want to know.

    Some thoughts

    Connections on Facebook seem to be much more meaningful and useful when you think of it from a psychological perspective.  Friends are much more meaningful to an individual on a personal level - they are people you have actually met.  From a graphical perspective, friend-based networks form a web, where follower-based networks form a hierarchy.  One is a popularity contest, where there other is simply a network.

    Wheat vs. Chaff

    When I open my Facebook news feed, there’s a high likelihood there is something in there that I care about (wheat).  However when I open my Twitter stream, there is a whole lot of chaff.  Most of it is either people whose business lives I am interested in, or news.  Rarely do people I know post to Twitter, and if they do, they typically tweet about news or insights, as opposed to personal things.  I follow accounts that either belong to people I know, or otherwise post interesting things (such as @techmeme).  It’s almost like Facebook and LinkedIn are my personal networks, and Twitter is my news reader.

    Follow = Spam?

    I rarely get a friend request on Facebook from someone I do not know.  Contrast that with Twitter where I get followed by people that I don’t know every day, who a) want to try to sell me something, or b) are hoping I’ll follow them back so they can build their following (typically self-proclaimed “social media consultants”).  That plays back into it being a popularity contest.

    What do you think?

    Share your thoughts on Follow vs. Friend in the comments.  It’s an interesting topics I’m constantly thinking about when working on social/professional networks.