Friday, May 28, 2010

New posting about Facebook

Monday, May 10, 2010

Friends, what are they?

The dictionary lists one of them as “a person with whom you are acquainted” and yes, today, I have one person in mind. A better definition might be “a person you know well and regard with affection and trust.”

With all of the social media attention recently, with Twitter and Facebook and the like, there are a few terms being thrown around, like “Friend Me on Facebook” or “Follow Me on Twitter”, or just what is this thing called FriendFeed? It seems like everywhere I turn these days, someone is asking me this – “Friend me on Facebook.” Sometimes it’s a person; sometimes it’s a company. Should I become “friends” with a company? GE – I don’t know, Comcast – nope, Rockwell, Nike, Ford? How about HP, or Accenture? Barrick Gold, or Ryanair, or Phillip Morris (jeez I could talk a bunch about how big tobacco and these “scientists” of theirs setup the climate change debate we’ve been going through these last few years), or Halliburton, or Monsanto?

It’s a difficult situation with social media these days, as I said, everyone wants to be your friend, and I’ve “followed” a small group myself, those people with similar interests on Twitter, or my family on Facebook. But I find myself (after posting a few things) wondering what all of the fuss is about. Isn’t this all supposed to be about communication?