One Thousand Plus Friends On Facebook
Frenchie is inspired. Matt Kuleza, a student from Melbourne, is teaching us a lesson about friendship. Over the next three or so years he’ll have coffee with more than a thousand “friends”, and write about it on his tumblr. Frenchie says,
…take the time to slow down, meet your friends and get to know them and throw in some travel as well.
Well hear, hear. A world tour of facebook! Since reading the story I find myself scrolling through my feed, marvelling at the diversity of places represented. I’d go all the way from Brisbane to Israel to Nairobi, stopping off via India, Canada and Scotland. Score one for social media! Ready those beans!
But more than that it strikes me how impractical it is to be friends with one thousand plus people. Really, it can’t be done – unless you’re a Melbourne-based student with more time on your hands than most people (not to mention the money), and even then, it’s not sustainable forever. I mean seriously – it’s taking him several years just to have a single coffee with each of them. In the great social media epidemic that is Fear Of Missing Out, this project is the most convincing argument I’ve seen in favour of just calling the whole thing off. It’s great to connect, but to connect meaningfully over the long term, we need to narrow things down.
I have a long history of ambivalence with social media. I was roughly the last person of my generation on facebook and for years I was there in name only. Recently, I’ve been toying with it more, and I’ve decided it has its uses. Maybe my problem lay in seeing it as an imperfect mirror for face to face interactions, or perhaps a dodgy prosthesis, instead of some kind of cybernetic extension which was never meant to mimic anything natural.
Now I find I can use it to cowrite blog-based Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style stories with small groups of writers spread out across the globe and all its time zones. That’s not natural, but it’s awesome. So (facebook tells me) was my high school reunion, which played out this weekend on some other part of the globe. “We should do this every year!” said an old classmate I probably wouldn’t have recognised on the street if he hadn’t posted up a few photos. Now I’ve seen him, and I know where he is. But we won’t do it every year.
Somewhere online we’ll be out there, traceable with a few clicks and taps. But at the end of the day we’ll go on with our lives – even Matt, despite his adventures. In the meantime, I wish him great coffee, good friendships, and the best, most productive uses of online social media.
I think there has been studies on how many friends // faces you can recognize and it’s around 200, I want to say. Since I have friends who are of the younger generation it is fascinating to see how many friends they have. Often I get request from people I don’t even know, but in Thailand it’s all about having “friends” and not necessarily making connections. It’s a popularity contest, of sorts. YAWN
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I think this guy’s friend list is a bit the same, in that it’s about keeping a big dossier of potential connections (he’s in the media industry as I recall so it makes professional sense) rather than actually making real connections right now. And this project highlights that for me, because, seriously.
It’s definitely the pretence of popularity that makes me roll my eyes. If we’re all being real about it then sure, a thousand “friends”, whatever, we both know we can’t really compare because we’re not using Facebook the same way.
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I have a few hundred friends that I regretted of inviting especially the ones I didn’t know. And I have a personal policy of not deleting anyone only if they removed me. Then I celebrate. I actually built 2 websites and now on my third and facebook is actually really great in promoting my sites. It seems that it is steadily growing my business. I did it with no thousand friends. A girl I knew had almost 2,000 and she still doesn’t have a job. Success is still in improving on what you do professionally or attain a skill rather than spending hours increasing friend’s list or connections. In this FB is useful. I guess you will respond since you did for everyboy else.
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Yes! Still receiving comments!
Very true – Facebook has its uses but it doesn’t replace the basics. Hope your friend finds a job soon…
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This made me ponder. I’m not a Facebook person, so can’t totally relate to the thousand “friends,” which I doubt are actually friends. Social media is so different than sitting down over a cup of coffee with someone. I can’t quite marry the two.
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I think that’s it – I can’t quite think of them as the same thing. I actually feel better now I can think of them as “Not The Same Thing”. It’s a nice project but it does highlight the difference between Facebook and day to day interactions.
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Congrats on a much deserved milestone! Even though I am stuck here in the USA with no family travel plans in sight I always love reading about your exploits
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Not my milestone – Matt’s milestone.
Thanks – more exploits coming (at some stage…)
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I think I may have about 300 friends on Facebook and most of them I honestly have unfollowed. That way I can keep in contact my close friends on Facebook and not hurt anyones feelings by unfriending them. Silly I know, but still…
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Heh. Yes, see that’s what ends up happening – people friend but unfollow! Or if not the algorithm mucks with it for them. Either way, it’s hard to have that one-to-one two-way conversation.
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Well, I think we should have a virtual coffee together. I’m having one right now. Does that count?
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Virtual coffees are definitely the go. I will think of you next time I have one and it will totally count. More practical that way, too.
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It’s pretty much a marketing tool for me and just a plan b marketing activity at that. Face to face is much better.
I also read some interesting things about friendship, it appears we’re pretty well capped at “knowing” about 150 other people at any one time.
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Yes, that seems like a sensible limit – somewhere around that many. As a marketing tool it may work better, but then again with algorithms changing it seems there’s always some new marketing “system” being touted for it – hard to keep up.
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Hi Bronwyn! My Facebook account is inactive – i just use it as access to Facebook in case a blogger or other internet author provides a link for information. You know in IT there are 3 basic relationships – 1) one to one; 2) one to many ; and 3) many to one. Facebook can do all three, but excels at one to many. This works well for those who have a “message” like politcans, companies, committees, etc. Developing over 1,000 one to one relationships is not very sensible. I’ve read that an average human can only reasonably have a maximum of 6oo acquaintances and still know something about each one. (Which is posited to be the basic failure of communism – people will only work for the greater good when they know for whom they are working; so communes, or small towns can successfully employ communism but no larger groups) Even so, knowing enough and communicating enough about 1 person to call them a “friend’, precludes having more than a handful of friends. Psychologists suggest that the average “healthy” psyche has 2-5 “friends” and the rest are acquaintances.
Anyway, Facebook using the word “friend” is a misnomer. i personally don’t subscribe to many one to many realtionships, but some people do and facebook is excellent for that. Just sayin’
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Really? 2-5 friends? That is interesting. Any idea where you read that?
But yes – “friends” is definitely the wrong word. I like that way of putting it – it’s not really one to one but one to many. And I think this project – where he tries to turn the one-to-many back into a one-to-one and we get this chance to see how that would work in reality really highlights the fact. On the other hand, you have to appreciate its utility in other styles of communication/relationship.
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The LIKE button has returned. I like the like button. Facebook I do use, however it can be a huge time waster. All these games aps they have with multiple sources asking you to play and in the background big brother watching, recording and selling information about you to greedy advertising moguls. I tried the flaky stuff and gave up as time is too precious to waste days on that. The big plus for me is I have so many real friends there. Friends I’ve known for years. It’s not about collecting faces it’s about having friends. Great way to check in once in a while to see what’s happening in their lives. It seems you’ve found another legitimate use of FB.
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Yes! Back by popular demand. 🙂
The games on Facebook! I didn’t even get into the games on Facebook. I have to say I haven’t tried any, though I have fielded numerous “invitations” (I swear the inviter didn’t even realise they’d send one…).
Checking in once in a while can certainly be nice. Keeping up day to day… it doesn’t work so well there in my opinion.
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It’s funny you mention the school reunion Facebook thing – my husband is finally sold on Facebook after his unused account was bombarded with love prior to his recent 20 year reunion. Glad he was using it as he took us to the Gold Coast for it and I got a weekend away with only one child. As for social media, as an isolated stay at home mum this year (was never the plan for me to be a stay at home mum for longer than six months but baby won’t take a bottle so I am stuck for a little while) I am so grateful for it.
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It’s really good for things like reunions. And it’s handy for the stay at home parent in some ways, although I think there you have to be careful with what you expect it to do for you. I’ve definitely come around to the idea in general. This project really encapsulates all the great things, as well as the limits, of the medium for me.
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It’s interesting to see a few reactions of “that reminds me, I need to cull a few FB friends” … I read this and thought “aha, FB is a machine for maintaining ten times the connections anyone but the most pathologically extroverted could keep as devoted friends”
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That’s the transition I’m making with social media. I used to be of the “let’s keep this under control, as in traditional social networking” variety and it didn’t work out for me. Now with my new “with facebook’s help, I’m a cyborg!” outlook I’m enjoying it a lot more.
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I love social media! I get to see my friends cute babies, random things cats are doing and post life milestones to my nearest and dearest. Like the time we found a perfectly round egg. People need to know about that 😉
PS: I can’t wait to have a coffee….no make it a mojito with you one day! xo
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Mojito or coffee – could go either way 🙂
I can see I should have asked you earlier for your thoughts on social media, when I was having a hard time thinking why I should use it!
I am enjoying it these days for the cats and cute babies – but the milestones to nearest and dearest. Does Facebook do that for you? Because I find that’s the one thing it kind of sucks at. People can post things but whether or not they get seen by their intended audience is anyone’s guess.
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I enjoy using fb because it helps me keep in touch with people who don’t live in Brisbane, such as yourself. And while it’s great to see you I don’t mind if we don’t meet for coffee all that often.
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Muzz, I would use Facebook for your comments alone. If I had a big enough budget for this blog I’d hire you as my Facebook manager 🙂
But yes, it is handy to keep track of people who’ve moved away. I think for a while I was equating it with having coffee, though, and on the whole it felt disappointing. Your updates aside 🙂 I’ve let go of that since, but Matt’s project really nailed down my thoughts on it.
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My husband isn’t on facebook. Neither is my brother (but he’s only 20 so not our generation!). I find it hard to stay friends with people who don’t get on there though since everything seems to be organised through there in my friendship group! I have often wanted to leave it as it is such a time suck, but then I have lots of blogging friends and use it for business purposes so I am kind of stuck. I also love my facebook mother’s group, so it definitely has its positives!
I used to try to stick under 100 people, but i have let that go a bit now. I do have a rule that if I don’t want to wish the person a happy birthday when it comes up that it’s their birthday then I need to remove them!!
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You’re married to one of the last holdouts! It’s funny – the next generation don’t seem so keen on it either (I’ve been told).
The time suck thing is what gets me with it. But the groups are definitely useful – it was much harder to organise people like that before social media.
I was just saying to Linda below that I used to be like that with Facebook/etc (keeping the numbers down to a manageable amount) but I’ve sort of come away from that idea. One thousand friends? Why not? As long as you don’t take it too seriously as a platform for friendship.
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Some of my best friends aren’t on Facebook. I think an age thing. As I become more involved in multiple social media streams, because of the blog, I don’t take it all so seriously. I think each of us comes to know what a true friend is. Facebook was clever to title a ‘follower’ as a friend, but it is just a word that was assigned. They could have chosen Facebook acquaintances. Just my thoughts as an old girl. As far as Matt traveling the world to meet everyone, well I would love to do that with my blog followers. 🙂
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Thing is, some of my best friends aren’t on Facebook, either. And some who are don’t use it as such – they have a profile but it’s completely inactive. So the Facebook world and my face to face world don’t match up very well at all.
I think what you say about not taking it all so seriously is about right. Once upon a time it was just facebook and it was all serious. We had 100-200 friends each and darn it, you read their feeds! Now there’s been an explosion of various platforms and people with over a thousand friends you can’t help but shrug it off a bit.
I’d love to do a world tour of either blogs or Facebook, though! Or twitter… or….
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I have just over 200 friends on my personal FB so perhaps my age is an advantage in keeping this under control.
Imagine the blog post series as we introduce bloggers from around the world. 🙂
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Ooh… That would be so much fun. Your place for first stop? Maybe we could do the world’s longest progressive dinner?
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Excellent plan. Let’s get on that plan straight away. 🙂
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I have 403 – half of whom I can’t even remember when they pop up in my news feed. I need to have a serious cull 🙂
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Or do you? If you’re trying to use it as part of face to face style friendships, then yes, a cull seems sensible. But I’ve given up trying to use it like that, so I don’t tend to remove anyone. Mind you, I’m not up to 403 yet, either!
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I think if I can’t even remember who the people are, they probably shouldn’t be there 😉
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I can see the logic in that argument, it’s true.
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I don’t know about others, but my Facebook friends have pretty much left leaving comments and gone to posting things they pull off the Net, like photos of cute kittens. I still check in daily. It serves as a way of at least touching base with friends and relatives I otherwise might not be in contact with. In terms of communication, the comments on my blog, and hopefully the comments I make, are much more meaningful. –Curt
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That’s happening with me, too – fewer personal comments, more sharing of things which are already online/by somebody else.
The blog space is definitely more meaningful in terms of direct connection. Facebook keeps people handy when you’d otherwise lose contact – but yes, communicating with them in a meaningful sense – not so much on that platform.
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Congratulations on your 1000 plus milestone 😄 And I do think the coffees care a lovely idea.
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I’ve got a long way to go before 1000 friends on Facebook! The coffees would be fun, as long as you looked at it as a quirky Facebook project rather than building up ongoing friendships with 1000 plus people. You never know what’ll come of a coffee, though!
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Wow, that’s a lot of fb friends! I have about 500 lol.
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I have way fewer than 500. 1000+ is a lot! It seems like he’s one of these arty creative people who collects all sorts of connections because you never know.
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