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9
Bloggers and journalists have been debating this question for some time. The opinions essentially fall into two categories:
1. “Keep it real - Facebook should be used as a tool to communicate and interact with people you know in real-life. What’s the point of collecting hundreds or thousands of so-called friends you hardly know and don’t possibly have the time to interact with? Maybe people who collect Facebook friends in this way had really lonely childhoods or something?”
2. “Use the web as an opportunity - Facebook can be used as a means of connecting with real-life friends and for me to create a wider web of friends. To me, the more friends I have in life the better, even if they are ‘only’ virtual friends. A wider circle of friends can create opportunities for partner relationships, jobs, business and purely social occasions”
Which side of the fence do you sit on? I’m firmly on the side of opinion number 2 - use the web as an opportunity - but I’d like to expand on my reasons why.
I don’t have a problem with people who want to ‘keep it real’ and have a low number of friends on Facebook (or any other online social networking site), but so many of them have a problem with those of us that want as many friends as we can get. There’s a snobbery going on there and I’m not sure of the root cause. But who cares, I have my own reasons for wanting 5000 Facebook friends and as many friends on other sites as I can get. By the way, if you didn’t know, 5000 is the limit Facebook places on the number of friends you can have. Which is kind of weird, but the subject for another topic…
Why I want 5000 Facebook friends:
Because to me, having 5000 friends in life is better than having 5. Surely the relationship I have with these 5000 friends will be more diluted than the relationship I could have with 5 close friends, I hear you say? Perhaps, but the combined knowledge, experience and social power of 5000 people is way greater than 5. And surely you’re not saying that I can’t gain some meaningful relationships too? I believe in percentages. The more friends I have, the more opportunities can be created.
And I’ll throw in another argument against restricting your friends list to people you only know in the real world: if there was no Facebook, would I suddenly lose the ability to connect with all my real-life friends? Of course not. I keep written address and phone number books. I have my friends’ telephone numbers stored in my mobile phone. I have their email addresses. I know where they live and can hop in my car to see them. If the web was switched off tomorrow, life would go on. So why not use the power of the web to broaden your horizons?
For those of you that agree with my thinking, why not add me as friend on Facebook?
Photo Credit: wili_hybrid