What’s a friend on Facebook today?
When I entered Facebook, some friends were quickly available. Ok, most of them did not apply to the same friendship scheme as my ‘real life friends‘ — the main qualification was: we both used facebook and met before. Those were the days of early adopters.
Now these days are gone. And in my facebook friends list there is a wild mixture of friends, friends and friends.
Some of the early facebook friends have become real ones, too. And some did not. But I did remove only a few. Long time real friends joined facebook later. Some were astonished about my friends there. They had never met them at my birthday parties (I don’t publish my date of birth on social networks, but that’s a totally different story).
Some of my ‘real’ friends feel a little confused or even distorted by my communication with early facebook friends. Sometimes we sound a little too much techie, I was told. And the early facebook friends are laughing about people who obviously don’t see the difference between the inbox/outgoing and the commentary function on status updates or wall posts.
Don’t know yet what a facebook friend is and how to deal with that. Any ideas? I already do have several lists in which I sorted my friends.