Mike Arauz from Digital agency Undercurrent illustrates his conclusions on online friendship. He says that instead of worrying about terms like ‘friend’ companies should ask how do they move their friends from acquaintanceship to “best friendliness”?
Over on his site Arauz describes each stage in detail and while my own experience with PSFK doesn’t allow me to fully agree with the steps and even the actions he considers fit in each stage it’s a very useful piece to base discussion around. In summary:
Passive Interest e.g. repeat visits, blog readers, fans, followers, etc.
Active Interest e.g. people who leave comments on your blog, wall comments, @replies on Twitter, etc.
Sharing e.g. social bookmarking, retweeting links, posting links and content to my own sites and profiles, etc
Public Dialogue e.g. public @replies, referrals in a blog post, and references posted to our various sites and profiles, etc.
Private Dialogue e.g. exchanging email, TXT messages, IM, and direct messages on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.
Advocacy e.g. same tools as Sharing, but different language; usually entails recommending the person or brand, and not just a specific piece of content
Investment
Now I write about it, maybe the issue is that Arauz sees one axis of friendship when there could be a two or three. Maybe one axis could be about a friend’s motivations, another about the balance of value of the friendship to either me or them and another about that friend’s social activity.
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Great start in terms of mapping the depth of friendship in social technology. You’re exactly right, though, in terms of needing more axes. Reciprocity is an important dimension. I could be at the Investment stage with you, but you may be barely aware of my work or may not regard it very highly.
I think another dimension is sheer volume. Being close friends with someone who has thousands of followers may have a different value than being close friends with someone who has a hundred. Notice, I say different, not better. On the one hand, your ideas may get wider distribution through your well-connected friend. On the other hand, you may get more meaningful and more frequent dialogue with your less-connected friend.
April 16th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
He’s forgot online ‘friends with benefits’
Post a story on my widget and I will post your blog on my wotsit…
April 16th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
thanks, piers.
i really like your idea of multiple axis for this. the balance of value axis makes total sense to me.
but, could you explain to me what you mean by an axis representing that friend’s social activity?
April 16th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Mike: Let’s be honest – we want friends who are going to talk about us (in a good way). The more people they talk to, the more we like them, no?
April 16th, 2009 at 5:34 pm