We're All Friends...but does social networking have its limits?

by Bonnie Boots

If you believe all the hype about Web 2.0 and social networking, we can all be friends with everyone, everywhere and make a lot of money doing it.

I'm registered at a few Web 2.0 sites, and even though I spend little time at them I've collected an amazing number of "be my friend" requests. Simply by clicking a link--nothing more, no greeting, no exchange of personal information--I've become friends with a couple hundred people.

And yet the truth is, I don't really know most of them at all, certainly not well enough to call them friends.

I can call them acquaintances. After all, they've introduced themselves to me and I've responded. But their requests and my responses have been brief and as obligatory as the casual "Hello" I'd exchange with someone riding the same elevator.

I don't know these people in the sense that I know, well…real friends. I wouldn't recognize them if I ran into them at the grocery store. Their name wouldn't ring a bell if they called me and said, "Hi, this is your friend John Doe!"

And yet, we're all friends.

Social Networking and Web 2.0 have been touted all over the internet as the latest, greatest marketing tool. And the tale being told is that there are huge benefits to gathering up as many friends as you can.

 The premise is real---social networking really is a vastly powerful, natural force. In fact, every one of us was social networking long before Web 2.0 came along. Human beings are social animals. Social networking is what we DO. The only thing that's new about Web 2.0 is that we can do it with people all around the planet instead of just in our own neighborhood.

 But the lie of Web 2.0 is that simply sharing a link with someone makes them your friend.

A stranger who responds to a "be my friend" link is not a friend, anymore than I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is butter.

A friend is someone you invest your time and energy in. A friend is someone you share experiences with, exchange thoughts with, someone you offer to help and someone you can rely on to help you.

Friendship isn't instantaneous, formed at a click, though it can form surprisingly quickly when you meet people of the same mindset. But even those serendipitous meetings need time and an investment of energy to develop into real relationships.

The hyped-up marketing of Web 2.0 makes it seem that we can have a million friends. But it turns out there is a real, biological limit to the number of friends that a human being can have. Scientists studying the brain have shown surprising evidence that we may come hard-wired with an ability to form only 200 real relationships.

They say our brains can only recognize 200 faces, recall the names of 200 people, feel a sense of relationship to 200 human beings. After 200, details become foggy and feelings of being connected fade.

We are capable, they report, of having far more acquaintances. Some people in the studies reported having 2000 people they could call on for business and social events. But even these super-social networkers revealed, under study, that they had less than 200 people--often far less, like 5 or 6-- that they really considered friends, people trusted enough to share the deep inside details of personal life.

The danger hidden in all the Web 2.0 hype is that people begin thinking of social networking as a mere marketing method and friendship as something fast and shallow.

In fact, social networking is a powerful force, propelled by our innate human instinct to build a small, deeply connected tribe. And friendships are something most of us will say strengthen and sustain our lives.

Web 2.0 sites can be useful tools for calling the tribe together. But the power of tribe is lost if that call is reduced to nothing more than an email saying, "Will you be my friend?"

Something is lost when things that are meant to be rich, deep parts of the human experience are reduced to “marketing.”

Social networking is a skill. Forming friendships is a gift. And bringing that all together into relationships that can be both personally and financially enriching is a fine art. Web 2.0 will only fulfill its promise of revolutionizing the world when we learn to use it artfully.
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