What about the flow of friends on facebook? What percentage of friends in one's network are in constant flux?

~T the D
http://thedrunkelephant.blogspot.com/

As an early Facebook adopter and avid user, I think there's also a layer missing here that in regards to my closer friends, I definitely look at their content, and might make what this report considers "casual" contact, but for our significant communication I go to other mediums. Either external email, gchat, AIM, phone or text.

The people that I Facebook chat or message with it's because they are part of my less intimate network and I generally don't have other contact information for them that I use regularly (meaning that I probably wouldn't text them on the phone number I got off their Facebook profile, or email them at the address their profile provides).

So from my experience, the Facebook friends that I value the most, have the most personal connection with, and who's content I look at first, I rarely, if ever, communicate with in the manner this report uses to determine "friendship."

http://www.360kid.com/blog/2008/08/who-are-the-people-in-your-neighborhood-exploring-the-size-of-social-networks/

Twitter is a lot more authentic, in my opinion, in calling it 'following'. That is a fairly accurate term.

Past a certain number of followers, Twitter becomes a giant free-for-all of data which you can somewhat control by who you follow. Without tools to filter the flow, you have no hope of meaningful conversations, but you can build reputation and build connections which can translate into other realms. Twitter is not symmetric; you don't have to care about me just because I want to read what you have to say.

You can't really compare it to Facebook, where every connection is symmetric and the system exists mainly to support already-made connections. You very rarely make new connections in Facebook, mainly because every connection must be symmetric.

At Facebook most of the persons in the list are people who you know personally (at least to some degree)

At twitter, it's persons you are interested in following.

IMO, I've found it much easier and faster to interact on Twitter than on Facebook. I add people on Facebook only once I know them well enough.

I have nearly 400 "friends" on facebook. They fall into unique sub-groups. For example, on Facebook, I have actual, realy bonifide friends; my sister, husband, parents, relatives; then I have a sub-group of people who read my parenting blog; I have a subgroup of people who read my save the media blog.
I have a subgroup of my college friends; I have a subgroup of my elementary school friends; I have a subgroup of my work friends.

I might spend most of my time with my "real" friends and family, but I interact in different ways with the various subgroups. My blog readers may comment on my status updates that are links to the various blogs they read, so I'm connecting with them in that way in a very easy, low-impact way. But I might not be writing on their walls everyday or even once a month.

I think Facebook friends are microcosm of our friends in real life -- some or tight tell everything to friends, some of are hang out at the movies with friends, some are bitch about work friends, some are say hi in the hall friends.

For me, that works.

For the rest and in particular the view we can have of Twitter on the matter, I believe the end of that article in The Economist sums it all pretty well :

"people who are members of online social networks are not so much “networking” as they are “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances who aren’t necessarily inside the Dunbar circle,” says Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project"

"Social networking" is essentially advertising ourselves : we surely get to see what others do/think/whatever, but why we do it is primarily because we want people we know (even remotely) to be aware of what WE are doing/thinking/whatever. And that's not necessarily out of pride for ourselves but it can be because we genuinely think what we do/think/whatever is of public interest (just as it is to leave a comment on this blog right now) - and I remember Sarah Perez writing a very good piece about that on this blog (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/technology_is_great_but_are_we_forgetting_to_live.php)

(Amusingly and frustratingly, RWW has this nice "Connect with Facebook" icon prominently displayed in the comments section, but when I tried to use it? Facebook said the API key for the application had expired. Seems this FacebookConnect thing hasn't been fully worked through yet.)

Now, my FB friend list includes cow-orkers, high school classmates, college classmates, childhood friends, bands I enjoy, other bands whose members I am actually friends with, people I see only at annual and semi-annual events but whom I've seen and socialized with there for 10+ years

that comment was not completely written, and I clicked *Preview* not *Submit.*

I think I'll leave the rest of my thoughts for another day, when RWW's comment tools have been repaired.

Unless, of course, a priority notation system were in common use:

http://bit.ly/BangPriority

That said, I'm certain many people are truly thankful for these sites for rekindling older friendships.