Are my “friends” really my friends?

My “friends,” according to Facebook, are a pretty diverse group of people.  They span geography, time, points in my life.  I would probably be depressed to count how many people out of my “friends” I actually keep in touch with.  Friend is not the correct word though, it should be audience.  My “friends” are the people I care to keep up with or share information with.  They don’t need to be soul mates, buddies or even people I particularly like.  They serve as purpose as a “friend” for a certain reason.  They embody the potential reach that I have to broadcast information.

Danah Boyd makes an interesting point comparing journalists to those who participate in social network sites.  Journalists carefully craft a message to their audience.  People on social network sites do the same thing except it’s more casual; they’re conversing with their audience consisting of people with whom they share some connection, however faint.

Approaches to the friends you keep on social network sites could be classified as micro or macro.   A micro approach is to use social network sites to deepen the relationship with those you know and actually are friends with.  A macro approach is to use social network sites to widen one’s reach, to connect with the most people.  Naturally, one questions if one is better than the other.  They are simply different approaches.  However, the macro approach potentially has more implications.

As Boyd later says, “The Internet lacks walls. Conversations spread and contexts collapse.”  For those who choose a macro approach, they way they shape their message or more broadly, their online persona, becomes increasingly important.  The wider your audience is, the more diverse your audience is, the more important it becomes to control how your persona and message is received.

People who lack tact or don’t have a “filter” when it comes to what they say are going to run into problems as social network sites widen the reach of their message.  Previously, a gaff, faux pas or minor, insensitive comment received as humorous, have the potential to become disproportionately embarrassing or even a liability.  I think this point ties in pretty well with my first–and as yet, unanswered, point in my framing post–how has what is private versus public changed recently? Instead, I want to look at how public versus private applies to how users aggregate and interact with “friends” on social network sites.

I wondered if public versus private cuts across generational differences or user ability differences.  I think it applies to both, but in a unique way.  It exists in a balance.  Looking at what we perceive of as private versus public in the sense of social network sites, the better users, who tend to have more experience with these sites, understand potential consequences.  They understand the need to actively shape their online persona rather than simply post every photo they’ve ever taken and include in their status updates every thought that has ever entered their head.

User ability does, though, trump age differences in how users fare online–with a newly found, extended broadcasting reach.  Older users, not familiar with social network sites are weary of putting any information online.  Perhaps they feel it’s a slippery slope and they must resist the temptation to post information.  Perhaps they’re jaded and don’t want to risk having any personal information online.  While they fully understand the need to shape what is broadcast to the world about them, perhaps they don’t know how they would manage that message because they’re unfamiliar.

Younger users, out of juvenile stupidity and rampant vanity, exist on the other end of the spectrum.  They want as much information out there about them as possible.  They’re too young to understand the need to control how they’re perceived.  Young and reckless are often synonymous and absolutely in this case.

It’s ironic, young users have the ability to use these social network sites, but they don’t have the wherewithal to shape how they’re viewed by their audience.  Older users understand how best to control how they’re viewed but lack the technical ability to do so.

I just deleted a paragraph discussing whether today’s younger users will be more adept as older users in the future.  One would think younger users growing up in this new paradigm of the Internet and connectivity would make for better future older users.  But it’s also a little self-centered to think that technology will cease to continue to exponentially increase in capability.  There’s no telling where technology will take us, how advanced it will become.  One would think technology is only going to build on itself faster and faster which would mean that today’s younger users will in fact be worse future older users.  And this is a question I cannot answer.