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REAL FRIENDS
The word “friend” is widely used in online tools but what does it mean and does it matter?
People often sneer at the use of the word “friend” in online networking tools and ask how it is possible for anyone to have 5000 “real friends”. I remember when the use of the word friend first became an issue. I think it was in the early days of Flickr, the photo sharing site. You could decide who could see which of your photos and they drew a distinction between contacts, family, and friends. One of my friends, real friends that is, took exception to this use of the word “friend” and refused to use it. I decided to follow his example and set all of my photos available to all of my contacts. This worked for a while but as I loaded more photos it became clear that there was a group of photos that I wanted to make available to a smaller group of people who were closer to me than the other contacts. These weren’t family, the only other choice of contact category, so I gave in and started using the classification “friend” for this group of people. It didn’t mean anything – but it started to stick.
The use of the word is still problematic even though now much more commonplace. Even in real life I struggle with what to call people I only know through the Internet. I pull myself up often when I use the word “mate” to describe someone I know through social tools. I tend to keep it for people I have met more than once and who I maintain a friendly connection with through the Internet ...
