Different definition of "friend"

[jducoeur]

It says something that I now have (I just checked) more "friends" on Facebook than I do on LiveJournal, despite the fact that I spend less than 5% as much attention on it. But I've knuckled under and accepted the mantra, "It's just Facebook -- friending doesn't matter", so I'm now accepting pretty much every invitation that comes my way from people I even vaguely know, a far lower standard than I apply to LJ. (Although I'm still tending to toss invitations that garner a completely blank "who?" from me, and I get a surprising number of those as well.)

In practice, "friend" really means "acquaintance" in FB's vocabulary. This *may* prove to be okay as they ramp up their "friend list" mechanism: if apps pick up on this properly and permit fine-grained filtering, it's not necessarily a train wreck. But I'm still fighting my own LJ-trained instincts: since I actively read the majority of the people that I friend on LJ (and rarely unfriend), I'm used to that being a pretty high bar...

Comments

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

Remember that LJ is a forum requiring a longer attention span - people post actual *paragraphs* here rather than one-liners. Reading a status update from 50 FB friends isn't a big deal; imagine reading 50 medium-sized posts here...

[jducoeur]

Oh, sure -- LJ, by its nature, derives very different notions of community than Facebook does. Indeed, different from most social networks: the hybrid nature of LJ almost requires that it be treated like a social *application*, not like a simple list of people.

This just drives that point home in a simple and visceral way...

[ilaine-dcmrn.livejournal.com]

It does vary by site. Here I have my journal f-locked, so 'friend' to me on LJ means 'people I have some idea who they are and will let read my random life trivia. As a side effect this means I'm subscribed to theirs too - which so far is just fine.

On Ravelry, friending means more 'people who's work I want to track'. I've friended actual friends, some people who's work I like and want to see more of as they create it, and authors of some podcasts I want to catch blogposts of. People friend their for all kinds of random reasons and there is no strong cultural need for reciprocity.

[jducoeur]

Hmm. Which raises an interesting side-observation: I suspect that Facebook's loose definition of "friend" is precisely a side-effect of its *mandatory* reciprocity. Because of the fact that I *have* to friend someone in order to let them friend me, I wind up with looser standards there, because *not* friending them is a more overt snub. Whereas on LJ, if I don't friend someone it's a modest snub at worst. (Moreso because my journal is so public that whether I friend someone or not has a very marginal practical effect...)

[laurion]

FB let's you categorize friends into various groups. (LJ does too, but the higher standard of friendship makes it of less utility, potentially) I'm really waiting to see (and wanting to see) if FB really gets a move on using these groupings to some filtering advantage. As nice as it is to have a way to get in touch with old igh school classmates on Facebook, I really don't need to know what they're doing with every day of their life; we're not that close.

[evil-macaroni.livejournal.com]

I've just recently found a function that lets you customize your Facebook home page. So my friends on Facebook get put on the "tell me more" list while my mere acquaintances get put on the "tell me less" list. It's not perfect, though - some of my husband's postings are inexplicably ignored while I still hear about people I don't care about. Go figure -