Turns Out Those Six Thousand People Who Are Your 'Friends' On MySpace Aren't Really Your Friends
from the no,-really? dept
This seems unlikely to come as a surprise to most people, but despite the number of tools and applications such as social networks for getting people to network with each other, the number of close friends that most people have hasn’t really changed — and it almost always involves people who have gotten to know each other face-to-face rather than online. This isn’t particularly surprising or new, nor does it suggest that there’s anything less real about online friends. It just confirms what pretty much everyone knows: while it’s certainly possible to meet and get to know people quite well through online venues, meeting in person still has plenty of benefits — especially for reaching a closer level of friendship.
Filed Under: friends, relationships, social networks
Companies: facebook, myspace
Comments on “Turns Out Those Six Thousand People Who Are Your 'Friends' On MySpace Aren't Really Your Friends”
gimme a break
anyone reading this blog doesn’t have a friend anyway.
mySpace is cotton candy for the soul.
(First?)
They is my friends
I don’t use tgose applications to meet new friends. I use them to keep up with and find old ones.
Re: They is my friends
indeed. Finding friends solely online will land you permanently in grandma’s basement, or on Dateline, or both.
get off the computers and start talking to people!
It’s easy to realize that having thousands of friends online doesn’t really translate into any meaningful friendships and/or relationships. Those types of “friends” should be called “temporary fans”, especially for artists and musicians using MySpace. So get off the computer and start making real friends in your surroundings.
Re: get off the computers and start talking to peo
You forgot make some real music worth listening to.
I’ve met most of my friends on this techdirt site
Re: Re:
AC @ #4 You mean like Dorpus and Angry Dude….tht’s sad.
Re: Re: Re:
wtf mate, dorpus is a hero
I once had a friend but he died, of lonliness, then I got another friend, but he broke his leash and ran away, but then I had a third friend, until i forgot to water it. Now I have no friends, maby I should give myspace a try 🙂
Oh - My - GOD!
Holy crap !
You mean 500+ on linkedin are not actually business contacts, blog isn’t a resume , and as self-inflicted CEO title doesn’t mean that person is an executive ?!
Oh my.
myspace is garbage, but I’ve made lots of online friends who are actual friends.
How do you know - who really is your friend?
Friends!? hmmm …The ones that I have … I had found when I was much younger. A time when I was not so cynical about life, fair play, and especially justice. (When you are young … you believe there is justice, but when you are old … you know that there is no justice) My true friends were just as excited about life as I.
The main thing and most importantly, we trusted each other with our deepest secrets of our love life, dreams, and ambitions. My friends are still there to kick my rear-end when it is truly needed, or even during a rare moment that a hug is required. I do not trust easily anymore, nor am I so excited at all about life and living a dream.
Therefore, I have the very same old friends plus a few very special ones that I had acquired along the way … during some of my darkest moments. Until then, I did not even recognize that they truly were my friends. Frankly, I never had a friend or a lover that I could not trust.
Re: How do you know - who really is your friend?
Lighten up Francis.
Re: How do you know - who really is your friend?
Apparently, you never worked in my office – styabbing in the back seems to be our pastime.
Re: How do you know - who really is your friend?
Hi… What you said up there was totally true. Your one of the few people on this that I agree with. Although I never acquired a friend while I was young I still have friends right now that I trust with my life and my deepest secrets.
Re: Re: How do you know - who really is your friend?
I once had a friend but he died, of lonliness, then I got another friend, but he broke his leash and ran away, but then I had a third friend, until i forgot to water it. Now I have no friends, maby laptop batteries I should give myspace a try 🙂
say what?
you mean all those bikini bitches that send me friend requests aren’t interested in my seksay???
No shit?
Every great relationship is either founded on sex or loyal camaraderie. Tough for either ingredients to really come into play online.
I’ve never met anyone online that I’d be particularly interested in meeting offline. Myspace, or the like, is something I have no interest in nor am I ever likely to.
lol…i enjoyed reading the above comments. in social networking, most people just want to be ‘seen’, to be ‘identified’ with a certain person. the more they accumulate ‘friends’, the more ‘popular’ they think they’ve become.
well, everything is enclosed in quotation marks because most of it is superficial, I guess.
if you want to be friends with people in your community, there must interaction. otherwise, what good is it to have 5k faces whose only contribution is adorn your page.