Andy DeSoto - Latest Comments in Emotions make social networks meaningful

Re: Emotions make social networks meaningful

zakkforchilli — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:26:02 -0000

Very interesting topic i must say. I use Twitter for all that usual, 'I'm in depressing mood' kinda stuff. Usually no one replies or anything, but its good to just let it out sometimes.

Re: Emotions make social networks meaningful

Andy DeSoto — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:11:06 -0000

Thanks for commenting, Erin! That would make for an interesting experience: trying to be more personal than usual on all of your favorite networks to see what happens. I don't know, to be honest! Let me know if you do decide to follow through with it.

That's interesting to me that you know all of your Twitter friends in person. Do you happen to live in a particularly tech-savvy place? I find that as an early adopter I can only convince maybe 2-5% of people I know in real life to join me on services like Twitter, so if I didn't try to follow new people, I'd be extremely lonely on the service (and, thus, wouldn't have much reason to use it).

I think you might be in the minority if you only friend people you do know. I wrote another post on 'friending' unknowns, etc. on networking sites and got a number of great thoughts on why one might want to expand their horizons (take a look here: http://www.andydesoto.com/s....

I guess my question is this: what is the foundational place to make relationships, as you describe, online? Ignoring for a moment your real-life contacts that join you on a social networking service, how can you forge lasting relationships on the internet? If not through a short-form site like Twitter or Plurk, then what?

You've inspired me to think about these questions in a little more detail, and I'll have to get into a bit more depth, as you suggest, in a future post.

Thanks for taking the time to visit and comment!

Re: Emotions make social networks meaningful

ecrunner — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:47:09 -0000

I found this link from another post I read (Dosh Dosh) about Twitter relationships. I agree with you to some degree, yet have to disagree only because I don't think that you get into the issue quite deep enough. I agree that Twitter and Plurk are somewhat impersonal, however for me it is in the mere fact that no one will really care to follow you unless you know the person. I have been a member for some time (ecrunner) and have yet to get followers that are not my personal friends or co-workers. That being said, it is irrelevant to anyone to share my feelings and emotions to strangers, as it will probably scare them away from following me. (.... thought: I will experiment and share nothing but feelings the rest of the week. See who follows me then). Where I begin to disagree, and I commented on the other blog, is that twitter is not the foundational place to make relationships. There are many different social sites on the internet and each one is intertwined with one another. In order for you to make lasting relationships on twitter, you have to have that same interaction on Digg, Stumble, etc.... However, you have to keep in mind that each of these sites will result in different types of relationships. Check out my take on it: http://tinyurl.com/5m3ecs I do think there are many common thoughts on social networking, though.