We Are All Friends Here. Right?
Written by Russ on April 17, 2008 – 1:12 amAlternate Title: How Much of Your Friend Am I?
I’ve returned from a ridiculously refreshing trip to Miami, and I am more exhausted than I’ve been in recent years. I feel like I’ve got so much ahead of me and a lot on my plate right now, but none of that is a bad thing.
The IA Summit was fantastic. There was a slight hitch in the initial giddy-up, but it did not take too long to forget about it. We moved on with the great learning, sharing, connecting and, oh dear lord the Twittering!
No, really. The Twittering was unbelievable.
The Twittering was constant; it was almost a backdrop to the entire event. Twittering was shared notes, timely jokes, a loudspeaker and an invitation system. Twittering kept pelople connected and helped in making decisions about various presentations, meals and meet-ups.
In 140 characters or less.
My New Friends
I’ve got all these new “friends” who are following @russu, and all these great people that I’m now following. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that we’re probably going through a touch of IA Summit withdrawal–but it’s very nice to hear that everyone is arriving home safely, or at least well on their way. In the time that has passed from authoring to publishing, I’m surprised to say that the twittering remains pretty active.
And that is all pretty cool stuff, right?
Right.
Really!
But it’s a “level” of cool. These followers–some mutual and some one-way–are possibly a “level” of friend/acquaintanceship that is introduced into Andrew Hinton’s preferably titled “Cyber Space”.
Huh. That all sounds like I’m new to Twitter. I’m not, but I’m a new and improved “extreme” user now, I think. I’m trying to dial it down for the folks who still have to listen–that is, I want to keep you listening, so I want my Tweets to be minimal on the worthless noise side, whenever possible.
As I was looking over my “Twitterati” (as Livia Labate coins), I was trying to figure out how many of them I have as friends on Facebook and/or LinkedIn, Instant Messenger or otherwise. I’ve also been trying to understand and evaluate the “currency” of the following/follower lists–and whether or not the currency is legit or just in/outbound popularity whoring. With someone like Guy Kawasaki, I do not believe it is the latter, but for a regular Joe like me, I think there would be a lot less value if my numbers skyrocketed for no real reason. I guess there is something to be said about selective-friending based upon your own ecosystem credibility.
Huh. Now I sound almost kind of pathetic.
Maybe I should figure out just who “Russ” is in all of this, first.
Who Am I?
If I could quote an Indigo Girls song here, I’d say this:
“I’m just a mirror of a mirror of myself” -Least Complicated (there’s some irony for you)
See that? I’ve always thought that line was really taken from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
“I am not who I think I am and I am not who you think I am, but I am who I think you think I am.”
That, to me, also tells me that with each Identity I create, I have the potential to become a different person to each person that I think is watching me at any particular moment. That also means that Identity (and I’m looking at you Christina and Gene) may connect to a variety of different channels that, based upon how they are used, force you to manage your multiple identities in multiple ways.
So, uh, WTF, right?
It’s bad enough that I have to figure out who I am as a husband, a father, a larger family ecosystem with its own subgroups, as an employee and/or an employer and as a client or a co-worker. That’s a lot to manage–you simply cannot just be Ward Cleaver these days.
I wonder if this is what Flip Filipowski meant when he said [paraphrasing here] that he would not want to be alive in the future, because even the smartest of people today would probably come across as fairly feeble-minded.
We have a lot more to contend with. A lot more social structures. A new personality for each identity and a new set of the 3 mirrors to consider, calculate and present. The layers upon layers of honeycombs that we’re forced to manage, keep up with, and continue to add to as each new Next Big Thing(tm) is introduced is only increasing.
Holy Multiple Personality Disorder Batman!
Maybe “friends” now has varying degrees of intimacy. On Twitter, my friends (people I follow/follow me) are people I can share micro-formatted quips with. Perhaps I know all of them, perhaps only some of them, but mostly, there’s some level of shared interest (with the exception of the TwitterSpam that was bound to happen). In many cases, they may be people that I find interesting enough to want to hear what they have to say and they’ve simply extended me the courtesy of returning the favor.
On LinkedIn, I’m Russ the Professional(tm). It almost sounds like it should have a theme song. But that’s who I am. I can perform a few activities that may provide a bit of whimsy around me, but I want people to see me as a resume.
On Facebook, I’m Russ the family man. Pictures of my family abound and my contacts are mostly personal or innocuous sort of connections with people that I probably would have had a difficult time saying “no” to.
On Twitter, I seem to have flocked toward connections that share the same professional passions, or people that I can learn a lot from. Watching the rapid-fire splatter of these 100 or so people pushes me more than I ever could have imagined.
Who am I everywhere else? More importantly, who do I think you think I am, right?
For some, this must feel like being in many secretive dating-like relationships, if you’re not managing your identities in the context of your “true” personality.
I Think What I Think You Think When You Don’t Tell Me How You Think
This does not imply that you are aware of my desire–or that you even care–about how I want you to think about me. It does mean that it has to be dealt with; dealing with friend/fan requests, messages, emails, tweets, etc. are all two way.
I’m crazy, right?
Think about it–barring the “email must have gotten lost in the tubes” or “caught by my SPAM filter” scenarios, in general, the emails make it through the system (and I still SWEAR I didn’t receive the Xbox emails from Microsoft!). The Tweets may not, and other “Beta” types of things may have failures, but email mostly works. Even if its usage may be declining in youth.
“You cannot not communicate.” -Erik Spiekermann
That is my point.
When you do not reply to an email, an SMS, a telephone call or even a D message or specific tweet, you run the risk of sending a message that is open to someone else’s interpretation.
If I send you an email and I don’t hear from you within a timeframe I deem to be acceptable, some little voice somewhere starts to churn out an interpretation.
“Russ hasn’t replied to my email in 2 days–he’s always online! What a jerk, he must be avoiding me…”
Ugh.
Now we’re dealing with response times that are becoming almost uncanny. Think about it–even in the mid-90s, people really weren’t using much email (but, oh, for those of us who were, Pine was simply awesome!). You still had to get a birthday card from your grandmother with a $5 bill in it. Now, your mom can send you an eCard and dump $50 into your PayPal account, and as long as it’s before midnight on your birthday, she’s cool.
This also forces us into shifts in etiquette–if not presence, right? This is where I am. This is why I’m not responding to you RIGHT NOW!
We all know how to set our statuses in Instant Messenger, but how do you handle explaining your (in)ability to not respond timely?
In Twitter, people sometimes “sign-off”:
Off to bed.
about 3 hours ago
Why? To formally announce a status and not offend anyone who is within the realm of Twitterspace that is being co-occupied. Apparently, there is some new twittettiquette going around (yeah, I just made that word up, but I own it now: twittettiquette).
That, however, just depends. Upon you. The type of person you are and/or the type of person you want to allow others to perceive you as. Sounds familiar…
My New Friends?
I’m not sure I’ve figured out exactly who I am or what I am thinking all the time just yet, but I feel like I can at least start to discuss this whole friendship thing a little better. Don’t get me wrong–I know who Russ is, I’m just not always sure that he’s being perceived the same in all places.
This exhaustive social system is sometimes hard to manage–and difficult to interpret.
How many places are we all connected today? We’re all aware of LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, the blogosphere and all the other variations like Bebo, Naymz, maybe Spoke and the new one that will launch tomorrow.
We all have some of the same people in all of those connection points, but most likely not all of them. We share different friends with different people in the different social locations. The Cloud that connects all of the people in the world to me–and it’s not like I’m Captain Popular (more like Æsir, I’d say)–is probably so very large at this point that even a single new connection is likely to have a very large cloud of their own that would ultimately expand both clouds… The notion is kind of daunting.
Are We Friends?
That’s the big question, right? Has the word “friend” started to become as meaningless as Disney’s use of the word “princess”? Don’t get me wrong, Disney still makes tons off of princess (and many princesses’ fathers), but the more the term is misdirected to an inaccurate source, the more it seems to lose its value.
Does that mean I should not want my new “friends” to be my friends? Heck no! I consider myself lucky to have the connections that I have. I consider it to be a requirement on my end to stay connected and to reconnect in the future as much as possible.
What it does mean, however, is that some of our friends most likely aren’t people that we’re really friends with, at least not like it was “back in the day”. Back in the day, people had high school friends that were lifelong friends and who often stayed within the same communities for generations.
Today, we can meet new people online and form lasting relationships–I’ve run a message board for several years and more than one couple have met there and gotten married. I’m not making this up, but I’m not doing Warfel-level research, either. Certainly, most of us have heard of Second Life Marriages, right?
We’re Not Friends
Sometimes, it can be as simple as that. We’re not friends, I don’t want to be friends with you and I don’t want you to be lurking around in my “trusted” circle.
But sometimes you just can’t say “No”.
How do you tell the annoying co-worker that you don’t want them lurking into your Facebook? (How do you know if you’re the annoying co-worker? I’m not arrogant about my relationships, but most of the time I don’t want to impose on “acquaintances” lives by “friending” them inappropriately. Imagine the (mis)interpretations possible) They don’t need to be looking at your Jamaican escapades or peer into your family photos or whatever–but we fear the hallway discomfort or retribution from not accepting a connection. We feel obligated to share ourselves to the point that the selected membership of our friends starts to turn into a college kegger where someone always ends up throwing up in your room–and the door was locked when the party started.
Have you ever had someone on LinkedIn ask you for a recommendation even though you barely know them? How did that make you feel?
Exactly. Even the avoidance of the request can sometimes be difficult.
The concept of “Friend” is becoming more and more watered down. Acquaintance still exists, but acquaintance doesn’t sell page views.
Let’s Keep In Touch
Never since the IA Summit have I ever even considered that the notion of a business card could change so much. I wondered, in hindsight, if it would have been useful to have linked to my blog on my business card and if my twitter account would have been acceptable as well. Is that extending an open invitation to follow me around and converse? Am I desperate for friends if I do such a crazy thing? Do I think that anything I say is that important that I other people actually care?
For that matter, what do you think about it? What if my business card linked to a single page where you could sign-up and show a pre-determined part of your “online social-ness” to me and in return, I could show you as much as I am willing to show?
The image above represents all of the social presences/identities that you have, with one interconnecting point. The grey areas are “allowed” access points that each user is providing. The blue and green display the others that are unshared/private. That doesn’t mean that they’re still unable to be found, just not unlocked to someone else, which means that there is still a potential for social fallout with people that you are not sharing certain accesses with. Even if we find a single, unified standard approach to all of this… There’s still a management issue.
This, Too, Shall Change
I’ve recently gone “Facebook Dark” in my status at (where else?) Facebook. My interest has waned. My desire to keep my status updated to the dozens of folks who are connected to me has gone away. I’m tired of worrying how someone down the hall from my office will (mis)interpret something that may have nothing to do with them or work or whatever. I’m tired of the chore it is to be Facebook Russ, with the exception of uploading a few photos for a specific set of friends. Most of the people that are connected to me are not parents and most likely won’t care that Avery smiled for the first time today.
Maybe it was the work on the Facebook Application that I did that had me playing in that sandbox a bit too long. Or maybe it’s just exactly what I stated above. Maybe I want a new walled garden and maybe I don’t want to have to hurt anyone’s feelings in order to do it. Maybe I no longer feel the need to keep count of my friends and maybe I no longer feel as connected to some people I (selectively?) added.
Maybe, as someone joked at the IA Summit, that “People You May Know” widget on the side is really just a “People You Don’t Like That Much or They’d Already Be Your Damned Friend.” Maybe I’m tired of being reminded about people that could be in my Facebook Posse. Maybe it’s just Facebook overload.
Do you even talk to everyone you’ve Facebooked? Have you ever felt like typing the URL for (insert social networking site here) is just too heavy of a task? Undoubtedly, someone you haven’t spoken to in years is trying to bite you with their zombie or someone has sent you the latest kitty photo that you’ve yet to see in one of your 20 email accounts. When it becomes a chore to keep up with an identity, it can be difficult to figure out what has changed.
Most likely, the change is in you.
The Nail in the Coffin
Death and the Social Networks: It’s kind of a grim thought, and no one really talks about it. I’ve had loose discussions with others about how companies simply do not think about death. Companies never really consider that someday, we’re all going to die. We’ve yet to lose an entire generation of emailers, if you think about it.
Sure, people have died, and Yahoo! has had to be taken to court to be forced to give up private information, but people and companies do not think about the mortality of their connections.
What happens when I die? Where do my social networks go? Who gets to see them? Who gets to tell them?
I don’t even know how obituaries work anymore! The new connections that I’ve been making are very rarely geographically close enough to read about my death in a newspaper. My wife wouldn’t know how to track down anyone and let them know. My “local” or “in real life” friends wouldn’t know about this type of thing; half of them are just barely getting into LinkedIn (although most of them now seem to have a Blackberry Pearl–I’m not sure what that means).
In the future, probably not long after we start seeing a generation of emailers begin to die, companies will have to face the morbid task of requesting users to select a “proxy” or some other designated person who can have access to their accounts and handle any affairs that may need to be wrapped up.
The social implications can be huge. The more global, the more connected, the more we are not required to pick up the phone to hear a voice or walk into another room and physically see someone in order to communicate together, the more it will seem as if a voice just fades, and then ceases altogether.
This Brand New Era of Communications can be awesome in its unending methods of connectivity.
But, it might even be kind of sad.
Posted in Community, Resumes, Social Networking |
April 17th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Context. Context context context. Okay, I just had to say it a few times. We compartmentalize ourselves in the real world (the Whitney at work, the Whitney with friends, the Whitney with family, the Whitney on vacation, the Whitney on an interview, the Whitney home alone), so why shouldn’t we do the same online? Each profile reflects a different persona.
Some co-workers are also friends, and some friends are also family. It’s common to express different parts of our personality to the same people, depending on the CONTEXT. So when you’re connected to someone on Facebook, that’s essentially like telling them that you’re friends enough to go grab a drink at the bar. When you’re only connected on LinkedIn, you’re communicating that you are strictly colleagues and nothing more.
I think the beauty of the IA Summit was how fluidly we moved from conference hall to bar. Essentially we opened both our LinkedIn and Facebook personas to one another. We felt we could be ourselves, our whole selves maybe. We were honest about situations at work, situations in our lives. And Russ, I’m pretty sure that’s true friendship.
April 18th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Hey, Russ. Thanks for some really compelling ideas. It’s a conversational starter for more than one topic: the nature of identity in social contexts, the meaning of our connections within them, of death and the social network (love that one).
For whatever reason, I got to thinking about this whole idea of context—what Whitney spoke of in her reply. Like her, I’m comfortable with the idea that our online “identities” or personas are related to a social context in a way that mirrors the real world. What complicates it for me, though, is the idea of “audience”.
This response is more or less an exploration of that idea. For what it’s worth.
To understand what I mean, you have to first go along with the assumption that there’s a qualitative difference between an identity and a persona. I would argue that a persona is what I project (and therefore create) in a given context and that an identity is perceived (received) by the people who know me.
You mention a great quote from Goethe: “I am not who I think I am and I am not who you think I am, but I am who I think you think I am.”
Exactly. Our identity is tightly bound with what we imagine others think of ourselves. But to take it further (or to flip it over), who I think “you” are (your perceived identity) is ultimately based on the persona you project: 1) what you say; 2) what you do; 3) the collection of attributes (intangible and tangible) perceived by me, your “audience” at any given time. Basically, our perceived identities are largely tied to our words and behavior. Conversely, our words and behavior are often influenced by how we imagine that identity being received.
To rephrase Goethe: “I behave like who I think you think I am.”
Sounds like Zelig, but we all behave differently with different people—whether we’re aware of it or not. (With Roxanne, a friend, I’m mommy Cindy. With James, another friend, I’m old screenwriting friend Cindy. With my husband, I’m cranky wife Cindy. ) Some people bring out the best in me; others the worst.
If we agree that social “context” is the space in which we occupy at any given moment, then I would say that within any given context, our perceived identity is shaped by our audience or, simply, the person/people to whom we’re talking.
In this case, personas can transcend contexts. I can be UX Cindy in many different places (contexts), I can even be UX Cindy and mommy Cindy simultaneously (as I was at the Summit) but whether or not it’s either really depends on the audience as much as the context.
So what the heck is my point?
If our words and behavior are shaped by our audience, what do we do in a place like Facebook, a context made up of multiple, disparate audience groups.
That’s where I get all anxious and shit.
In the real world, this persona shifting is manageable because we easily modify our behavior from interaction to interaction. On Facebook, sometimes I’m not sure what to say when considering a status update, because I’m confused about who the message is for. (Although most of the time I just keep my closer friends in mind and imagine that those co-workers and family members aren’t even paying attention anyway.)
Having a profile in several different contexts makes sense and doesn’t seem to be the problem. It’s only when the audiences get mixed within a context that things get messy.
The problem is that I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
At the moment, my feeling is that online communities and their attendant friend-making seem to work best when the implications of the context (level of friendship?) is clear and the audience within that context are—I’m searching for words—-members of the same contextual tribe (?). This could be, as you mentioned, some level of shared interest (UX) or context (alums of the same school). For example, Facebook would be a lot less exhausting and a lot more fun it really were a private room of all of my closest friends from college. The good thing is that we get to choose our contextual tribe, but sometimes that can easily break down.
On the other hand, tomorrow you might hear me saying what a great thing it is to have all of these overlapping personas coexist in the same space like some kind of social anarchy.
Facebook now has ways to create different levels of privacy based on categories of friends. We can create groups of friends then block entire groups from seeing certain types of information. This is great, but talk about management issues. Russ, you could take your honeycomb graph and think of the parts not as different identities but as different components of one profile on Facebook. That’s more management than I can take, frankly, and probably another reason why Facebook is starting to feel more like work than fun.
And Twitter: I invited two close friends to Twitter who have nothing to do with the UX community, then instantly regretted it. Thankfully, they never joined, but those anxious feelings started up again around the idea of “who” I was twittering for. For those two friends, my tweets would probably have been comprised of a lot of non-sensical inside jokes and pop culture references—something that might be considered “noise” among my UX friends. And why would those friends want to hear about some a kickass UX blog article.
Am I compartmentalizing too much?
I’m new to Twitter, but it took about a couple of months before I really “got it”. First it was: why am I twittering to six people whom I barely know. Then, once critical mass had been reached, it became more engaging and fun. Now, after the IA Summit, I’m totally sold. But I think that’s because all of the folks I’m following are UX friends and acquaintances. The conversation, in my twitterverse, includes the quotidian, the stupid jokes, the poetry of the mundane, but always bounces back to a shared area of interest—a contextual tribe of our own making. Or is it my own making?
I guess the bottom line is that the “at” (context) can’t really be separated from the “with” (audience). And so…how do overlapping audiences complicate our identity? When do they work? When do they fail? Does it even really matter? It’s an interesting idea to unravel.
Hope this reply made a modicum of sense. Thanks much for provoking the conversation…
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
[…] Unger’s latest post “We Are All Friends Here. Right?” got me thinking about the nature of friendship on and off the web. I have made a lot of new […]
April 25th, 2008 at 1:36 am
[…] of friend the other day on her blog, which she started thinking about after reading a post on Russ Unger’s blog. She tries to decipher the distinction between all the social networks, and what it really […]