Last week, after much peer pressure from Sandy Hubbard and Jeannette Baer, I worked to get an invite to come into my inbox, and I joined up with Google Plus. I had been wanting to wait a bit to see if the buzz about Google+ was going to remain hot and heavy for say, a month or so. I’m not really an early adopter type of person. But Sandy and Jeannette are trusted friends and they said I should try it, so, I did.
I’m kind of having a problem with Google+ to be honest with you. It’s not anything privacy-related. It’s not a huge issue, perhaps. But ya see, on Google+, as you make contact with people, you can put them in a “circle.” It’s like categorizing people. When you start out you have a friends circle, an acquaintances circle, a family circle, and I think there’s one more too. When I see that people have added me to their circles, I feel a sort of obligation to indicate that I see their existence there, but I’ve pretty much just been stuffing everyone into my “friends” circle. I don’t want to go through the trouble of categorizing people, and I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings who uses the word “friend” differently than I do.
The whole process has made me think about the word “friend” as it exists in real life and as it exists in the online world, so I thought maybe we could talk about that and see where you come out on this issue.
We shook hands. We’re friends now.
When I was in fifth grade, I was going through kind of a rough time. I had been going to a private school and had met all of those kids when I was in nursery school. I think there were 62 kids total in my school when I left. When I was in fourth grade, I had some health problems that required a surgery. Both of my paternal grandparents passed away, 6 months to the day from each other. By the time I was getting ready for my first day of public school in fifth grade, I felt pretty darned scared. These kids had all known each other since at least kindergarden. I was an interloper, and not only that, but I was a tinier than normal interloper. Meeting people with confidence was not easy, and befriending people was a puzzle I couldn’t seem to fit together.
Let’s just say that I didn’t get invited to a whole lot of birthday parties when I was in fifth grade.
Because I had such a hard time breaking into the social stream (trying to do so when everyone is hitting puberty is also interesting) I highly over-valued positive interactions I had with other kids. If someone smiled at me, I felt sure we were friends. Anyone who was remotely pleasant, in fact, became a friend of mine, at least from my point of view.
As you might imagine and guess, my expectations of these people who I had deemed friends far exceeded what they felt obligated to do. They had nodded at me. I was buying BFF necklaces. There was a strong disconnect there. I had devalued the concept of “friend” so that literally anyone could be one.
I tell this story because I’m a little worried that social media, or the online existence we are all here using, is doing the same thing to the “friend” concept that I did in fifth grade. We are using the word “friend” so much that it is beginning to lose its meaning.
Back to Google Plus
So, I sign in to Google+ and I find out that a couple of women I went to college with are on there. I have known both of them for probably, gosh, 15 years now. I lived in the same dorm as them. Ate most of my meals with them for a good year or more. We saw each other go through pretty icky stuff, and we also watched each other go through pretty cool and awesome stuff.
I put them in my “friends” circle.
Then there are people who I just adore talking to online. Some of these folks I have had the pleasure of talking with in real life on the phone. Others have been there to cheer me up or offer me advice when stuff in the online world didn’t seem to be going too well. I would never want to put those folks into a category called “acquaintances” because they have been too supportive to merit that kind of “barely know you” group. On the other hand, and I say this with all love and respect, it’s not quite the same with them as it is with my college friends.
The problem I’m struggling with is that in the online world, those kinds of nuances are awfully hard to clarify. Are you my online friend? Sure, but if you’ve offered me kindness or legitimate support, that doesn’t seem quite accurate. But it’s different from those folks you’ve interacted with for years and years. How can you name a circle so that all of that becomes clear?
The online world is, in the end, very 2-dimensional. It’s very black or white. On Facebook, you’re either friends or you’re not. But it’s just not like that in the real world.
What do you think?
So I’d love to hear your thoughts about this. Are we using the word “friend” too freely in the online world? Does it mean something else now? If you are on Google+ or are planning to join, how would you “circle” people?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
This is post #82 in the Engagement Series. If you like these posts and don’t want to miss one (ever!!!) please feel free to hit the subscribe button!
Image by Michal Zacharzewski. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/mzacha
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Renee Malove says
July 9, 2011 at 10:06 pmThis is actually a perfect example of the difference between Facebook and Twitter I was discussing with somebody the other night. There are many acquaintances I’ve met on Twitter whose Facebook friend invites I have declined, not because I don’t enjoy talking to them but because I don’t know them like that. I don’t feel comfortable sharing the intimate details of my non-professional life with them. I worry what they will think if I post a slightly off-color joke or share a personal story that touched me but isn’t anything resembling politically correct. I don’t feel inclined to vent to them when something has gone horribly wrong in my day. And so we aren’t Facebook friends.
This is, I think, where we’ve gone wrong in the online world, and why we’re losing the anonymity and intimacy of our lives that we’ve held dear for so long. We’re throwing open the front door to our house and inviting everyone and their brother to come on in. As someone who’s hosted a neighborhood block party before, I can tell you, that’s a really, really bad idea. So the online world needs to have shades of grey for the people you’d be comfortable inviting to come in and sleep on your couch and the people you’d prefer to meet for coffee. Downtown. Someplace very, very public.
Margie Clayman says
July 10, 2011 at 10:06 amYep, exactly what you said.
I have the same concerns (old-fashioned as they may seem) when it comes to video chatting. Chatting on video is essentially inviting someone into your abode. If your computer is in your bedroom or in your back yard or wherever, that is where those folks are seeing you. Do I know you well enough to talk to you in my PJs at 10 PM?
I don’t think so. And I bet you feel the same way if you stop and think about it 🙂
Lines are important. And often overlooked.
Renee Malove says
July 10, 2011 at 2:22 pmYou’re absolutely right. I had an interview a couple of months ago that we had planned to conduct via chat, but the client insisted on a video chat at the last minute. Talk about dragging a brush through my hair, relocating out of the kitchen and pausing to pray! I’m not crazy about video chat for that precise reason. Nor am I fond of conducting phone calls with clients when my personal life is runnning amuck in the background-I know many people who do business on the phone in the car with the kids in the backseat, but unless they’re someone I know personally and well I’m not quite comfortable with that. It doesn’t bother me when they do it to me, but I try and avoid it whenever possible. Working from home, it’s not always possible (especially in the summertime), but…well, you see where I’m going with this!
Janice says
July 9, 2011 at 11:15 pmI just joined Google+ and was looking at the categories. I have a “best friend” that I exchange email with every few days (who is now out of state). We have been best friends for 55 years, from 4th grade through high school, and worked at the same company, in the same department, for over 25 years. In addition, I have another “best friend” I met in college and we have talked every Sunday for 44 years, even when she was studying in Paris, France. Yes, we have missed a few calls due to childbirths, hospitalizations or something “unavoidable”, but for the most part, every week since 1967. She lived in Boston, MA and came to Charleston, WV to college, where I worked for the Dean and took classes. After graduating from college she moved back to Boston. However, with the weekly calls, we know more about each other and our families than if we lived down the street from each other. We have given “undivided attention” to each other’s lives. Our families have even vacationed together in MA and SC. These two ladies would go in my “friends” circle.
I know a lot of Virtual Assistants who have become friends through IVAA, VANetworking, volunteering and job sharing/contracting. We talk on Skype, give each other support, listen when we need someone to bounce things off, and consider each other “friends”. I decided to make a new circle “VA Friends”. They are real friends, but not in the same way as my other friends who, I consider, have an emotional investment in our friendship. I hope that makes sense.
I may have to make another circle of friends for “animal lover friends” or “oldies fans” or ….. the list goes on. So, to me, a friend is many things, and each has its own identity/category/degree of attachment.. I may have a dozen circles of friends before I get this Google+ under control. 🙂
Margie Clayman says
July 10, 2011 at 10:09 amIt does make sense…I guess I just don’t feel like I want to take the time to sort people as if they were collectibles at an antique store. I want to spend my time engaging with people, living my life, doing my job…ya know? And in my experience, the more granular your people sorting, the more chance you have of hurting someone’s feelings.
Think, for example, of the painful process couples go through who are sending invites to their wedding. Oh. My. Goodness. When I was in graduate school I got invited to a friend’s wedding along with 1 other person in our group. The other folks didn’t get invited. Were their feelings hurt when they found out? Absolutely. But to the couple, they were inviting people whom they felt close to.
It’s even easier I feel to create misunderstandings in the online world because the word “friend” has lost that special meaning you’ve given it here. Your VA friends may be surprised they’re not in your regular “friends” group. People can be weird about that stuff, y’know? 🙂
Thanks for your GREAT comment!
Jason Sokol says
July 10, 2011 at 8:42 amMargie,
Awesome post as usual. I started playing with Google+ yesterday. So far, I have enjoyed it, but like you I was not sure how to effectively use circles in such a way as to keep it all organized and true to real life. I had the same problem with facebook about a year ago. I was starting to play with it a bit as a way to tie into my blogging efforts. As I did so, I soon realized that I needed some way to separate everyone. Facebook permissions worked for a bit, but I realized after using the platform for while that what I really needed to do was decide exactly how I wanted to use all of the platforms that was experimenting with. That’s when I ended my efforts with facebook and determined to primarily use the platform to stay connected to friends and family. Today, my personal profile is just that – a profile that I use for me. But I do find myself managing a bunch of facebook fanpages and groups for others.
Ultimately, I think we will see the same thing happen with G+. People with play with it and will determine how to use it 1) personally and 2) professionally. Like facebook, I am guessing that G+ will end up being one of those tools that tries to be something for everyone (I hope not, but so far it looks that way). In that case, we will all have to ask the ultimate question – what do we want it to be?
@jwsokol
Margie Clayman says
July 10, 2011 at 10:10 amyou’re probably right, Jason. I wasn’t around when Twitter and Facebook were in their infancy so I missed a lot of the formation process. However, I feel like since we’ve already been around the Facebook and Twitter block, some of that experience could be used to avoid some of the pitfalls in Google+ land. I’ll have more on that this evening 🙂
Claudia says
July 10, 2011 at 12:27 pmMargie, your words are eloquent and so thought provoking. I, too, have some of those same concerns. My favorite line was “We are using the word “friend” so much that it is beginning to lose its meaning.” You are so right. When talking to my husband or my Mom about a “conversation” that I may have had with a “friend” from FB and I find myself almost mumbling and explanation as to how I “know” this person…an embarrassment that arises, I am sure, from the intellectual realization that these are not “friends” in the sense that we have sociologically accepted “friends” to be…rather, they are the new definition of friend. And I am not sure that any of us really knows what this new definition of “friend” is going to be. With the rising popularity of internet relationships developed via social platforms like FB, Twitter and now Google+, sociologists are going to witness, I believe, a huge shift in how we define friends…this is neither good nor bad…it is just an “is”. Meanwhile, old fogies like me struggle as you do with what to do with my new “friends” on Google+…I’ve never had to label them before by putting them in categories and, as I went through each name, I found myself relating a relationship story about each of them to decide where they “belong”. Always wanting to please people, I put far more people in the “Friends” circle than I actually sit down with a cup of coffee with or talk on the phone to. And those that I could not find a true “relationship” connection with, I put in Following because it seemed kinder than “Acquaintances”. I realize that I can create my own Circle category, but that would become even more confusing and laborious. It will indeed be interesting to see where this all ends up in how we view relationships. Thank you so much for sharing….
Sherree Worrell says
July 10, 2011 at 2:44 pmMargie,
Thank you for the great post and for expressing what I’ve been feeling all week.
I use Facebook considerably different than Twitter (like Renee and many others I imagine). I am highly selective on whom I “friend” on Facebook, precisely because it shares a more intimate slice of my life. I even wrote my own post about that awhile back. I have a problem “opening the door and letting everyone in” on the more personal side of things.
With G+ I’m concerned. I was on it at the beginning and used the circles given to us. It was fine when I had very few people to add. Now one week later, I have people I don’t know adding me to their circles, people I’m not sure I want to share anything at all with and still more people that I wouldn’t friend on Facebook. Honestly, I think I’ve been added by folks who are just trying to be “top dog” on G+. (Seriously). Where do I put them? How do you categorize people you really like, people you “kinda sorta” like, and people you wouldn’t talk to even on Twitter?
I blocked a few people (they are blocked on every social media outlet I’m a part of), but they show up in my stream anyway. What’s the point of creating a “blocked” circle?
It’s exhausting trying to be kind, but it bothers me that I have to think that way in the first place. I know who I want to share things with and to what degree I do it. G+ is just too open for me and honestly, there is just too much noise going on. Hitting that mute button a bazillion times makes me feel bad. After all, those folks are supposed to be “friends,” right?
Jack@TheJackB says
July 10, 2011 at 2:50 pmI am adjusting the titles on my circles so that I don’t have to worry about some of these distinctions. If I am confident that you are a friend you go into my friend circle. If you are in a different category than I place you elsewhere. I don’t really like labeling people but this is how it is done.
More importantly, labels change. You may be a colleague today and a friend tomorrow so there is no reason why I can’t adjust things later.
Judy Helfand says
July 10, 2011 at 2:55 pmMargie,
Last week I was thinking about Facebook. You know how people out of the blue want to be your friend. I now have a new guideline for FACEBOOK: If I don’t have a photograph of you (or a member of your immediate family) in one of my hundreds of old fashion photo albums…then I am not going to confirm you as a friend. I just looked at my pending friend requests and there is one from a person called Misery Wong! Who is this person? LOL.
I once read a quote from Mark Twain….
“When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy–that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.”
– Letter to Mary Mason Fairbanks
I think your friend Twain sums it up nicely!
Judy
Gini Dietrich says
July 10, 2011 at 3:50 pmI have more than 1,000 people sitting there waiting for me to add them to a circle because they’ve added me. The problem with this is I don’t know 1,000 people…not even peripherally. So I’m not even stuffing them into a friends Circle. They’re all just sitting there. I have NO idea how to categorize them or what I’m going to do with the people who’ve added me and I don’t know. So I’ll just leave them there while I figure it out.
What I do know, though , is we should add one another to an ice cream Circle.
Kat Caverly says
July 10, 2011 at 4:10 pmYou do realize that only YOU see the names of your Circles?
All someone else sees is that you have put them in a Circle, so your own mental notes to keep things categorized, which we do naturally with our interpersonal relationships, is a private matter unless you tell them.
This comforts me, like a private Twitter list. so that I don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Since Google+ will only allow you to put 5000 people in Circles but unlimited numbers can put you in Circles, I think we have a best-case scenario between Twitter and Facebook functions.
Circles are about who you share things with. The more I learn about Google+ the more I am liking it. But still I want to give it much more time and see it grow and expand to include more people.
Stephanie LH Calahan (@StephCalahan) says
July 16, 2011 at 12:08 amI have never liked that Facebook used the term “friend” but remember that Mark Z started this thing in college with the idea that you connected with your friends and made friends with your friend’s friends. It was originally never intended for marketing or business networking. It was personal. Over time, users made the tool function in different ways and Facebook as modified accordingly.
I have always held that you have a limited number of true friends that would drop everything to come to your aid and a number of acquaintances that are in and out of your life for varying lengths of time. I have one true friend that I talk to on a really limited basis, but if I was in trouble, she would be the first person I would call. We may not talk for months, but when we do, it is like we just saw one another the previous day. I have another true friend that I talk to on almost a daily basis. The definition of friendship is also personal.
Jumping to G+ — I think an important feature of G+ is that you can organize your connections in what ever way makes sense for how you are going to use the tool. You can choose to put people in a circle or not. No one can see the circles that you put them in. This is the same in the Twitter private list and Facebook lists. The only difference is that if you put someone into a circle they know they have been “circled.” They will not know how you categorized them. On the flip side, you don’t have to categorize at all. It is just like someone putting me on a twitter list and I don’t put them on one of my lists. Collectively, we have different reasons for being out in the social sphere. Your reason will be different from mine.
Some people are list people and others are not. No right or wrong, just is.
If you are a “lister” — As you add each connection you have the opportunity to create an impressive demographic set of data in how you use your circles (note, you can do the same thing with Facebook lists too). Since people can be in more than one circle, take some time to think about how you connect with people and how you sell to people.
Consider
–obvious demographics such as male/female, or age groupings
–by industry
–location based
–affiliations (for example, you might want all of your BNI members in one circle
–business owner/non-business owner
–how you met (grade school, highschool, college, jobs, vacations, conferences, etc.)
–possible Joint Venture partners
–by type of information shared (social media, marketing, sales, productivity, health, etc)
The point is to think through how you would use the data later. For example, I work with business owners and entrepreneurs, so I have one that identifies everyone that owns their own business. As I look at that circle/list, I have a specific frame of mind.
If I sold makeup, male/female may be important to me.
Maybe you are a speaker and would like to get more gigs. Then knowing who the meeting planners and media personalities would be helpful.
I love to meet new people all of the time. However, I meet so many new people that I may forget details. Having each person in lists/circles helps me remember details about them that I may not otherwise remember. They are memory devices for me.
I don’t have any in the original categories that G+ identified.
To your success!
Stephanie