29 January 2009

You've Got a Friend

The tremendous popularity of social networking has led to some questions about friendship. One of those is when and how to "unfriend."

This New York Times article looks at the politics friendship in the online age. I like this quote from Henry Blodget, interviewed in the piece:

Mr. Blodget asked Facebook to develop new friendship levels that would let users sort their acquaintances by degree of separation. He suggested categories like “ ‘personal friends’ or ‘work friends’ or ‘extra special friends’ or ‘BFFs’ or ‘friends you want to hear meaningless trivia about all day long,’ ” and implored, “Please give me the ability to put friends in these groups without telling them I have done so.”
It's a fun article.

2 comments:

Jeanette said...

Isn't that SO true! My dad has 7 facebook friends, of which my mom, sister and I are 3. And when I look at his list, I know they are all his BFF! I really had to take a lesson from that, and went and chopped about 20 "friends" (the constant flow of bar drinking photos was nausiating) from my facebook, and I don't think they know...I don't know if I'm brave enough to say to their face, I'm sorry your life is so meanless, but I don't have time to even glance at it.

Lillie said...

This was too funny. And informative... I haven't dare de-friended, I figured facebook would alert them or something. But I've cringed a few things that come up on my page... perhaps I'll get the nerve.