Friendship 2.0 and Beyond

There’s a great discussion going on at my friend Robin Dickinson’s blog on “Building Relationships: A Question of Quality Over Quantity.” Today I’m picking up on the key topic that has risen from those comments: what I guess is easiest to describe as Friendship 2.0.

The Flaw of Faux Friendships

A good definition of a friend is someone with whom you have an exchange of life. A relationship where each person grows by what the other supplies.

Social Networking has made friends out of people we don’t even know. Not friends as in you haven’t met them but talk to them – but a friend with whom your only interaction has been the acceptance of a friend request. You don’t know them, and you don’t write on their wall or tweet them. But they are your ‘friend’.

Maybe we should dub these as faux friendships – where there is no exchange of life.

Cultivating Deeper Connections

The speed of the hi-churn, hi-turnover, hi-volume, hi-noise world is by nature conducive to faux friendship. Fast information makes for fast food makes for fast friendship.

Connections – the type that collaborate, exchange life, have meaning, grow by what the other supplies and make things happen – these require a slowing down.

How:

• Scale the levels of communication. Go from tweet to DM to comment to email to Skype voice to Skype video to meeting in person. Each level is worth 10 of the one below.
• Get on the phone, Skype or meet. Text pales in comparison for conveying personality.
• Give it time and frequency. The people I collaborate with at the highest level, I talk with daily.
• Openness. Be open enough to share your life, and open enough to receive life from others.