Social Networking: Number Friends Vs the Quality of Each Friend
October 1, 2008 at 12:04 pm | In Career Development, Networking, Personal Branding, eBrand, social media | 9 Comments
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A lot of very influential people are sounding off that it’s not the number of friends you have on social networks that matter, but rather the quality of the relationships. For instance, many people would rather have 100 close knit contacts on LinkedIn than 600 “lose contacts” or people who you might not even know. Facebook considers users with 5,000 friends (the max you can have) “whales.” Basically having a lot of friends on Facebook, contacts on LinkedIn or followers on Twitter is giving people a bad name. There was even a recent study done that compared the number of friends and wall posts you have on Facebook to being more or less narcissistic.
Number of friends
When it comes to the web, you are graded based solely on what is observable.
No one is going to research your entire network to see how close you might be with each individual. I’ve
heard stories of people getting hired over others because of the number of contacts they have on LinkedIn. Spam friend requests aside, if you are friended by another person, you should accept it unless you are using that specific profile only to be connected to a private group of friends.
If someone doesn’t know you and sees your personal eBrand, they will make a judgment based on the number of friends you have. Your website viewer doesn’t know how deep your relationship is with your network. How could they? To me, this boils back down to social proof. If you have an RSS chicklet on your blog that says 50,000, it’s pretty safe to say that many people will subscribe to your blog based on that popularity. The mentality is “if 50,000 people have endorsed this blog, it must be good enough for me to read as well.”
Quality of each friend
As you grow your network, only a percentage will remain in your top group of friends. As humans, there is no possibly way to have deep intimate relationships with thousands of people. It is impossible, even with the power of social media. A lot of people think email lists and livestreaming video can get you closer to your audience and that’s true, BUT you still won’t be able to develop quality friendships that way.
On a more positive note, many people could be attracted to your topic, philosophies, looks and more. These are people who may friend you or try and be apart of your network. It is to your advantage to embrace these individuals and accept their requests.
People who look only to the quality of each friend, will lose this web 2.0 battle because numbers count too.
Conclusion
You need both volume and quality. You cannot substitute one for the other. To win the personal eBranding game, you must be hyper-connected, yet maintain relationships with 20% of your network that will provide you with 80% of the value you need (80/20 rule of networking).
If you are reading this right now and only have a few RSS subscribers, friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter, it should drive you to become more social online and offline in order to maximize those numbers and befriend more individuals in the process.
People find people through people.
This means that the more connected you are, the better the chance that an opportunity will arrise.
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I’ve always stood by the community over the tool and the conversation over the number. Although I do agree with your followers for an idea or topic. I tend to follow ideas and not always people.
I think subscriber count is crap, the engagement with that subscriber count it more crucial. I also believe that there is greater engagement and value in niche sites than your major players. It’s too easy to get lost in FB or Myspace, yet so easy to get into a deep conversation in a niche network, forum, blog post or Twitter stream.
You create your own opportunities not by your network, but how you interact with your network!
Comment by Greg Rollett — October 1, 2008 #
Dan – good thought provoking post, I’m not ready to accept everyone on all sites.
On LinkedIn, I’d generally accept most people, but I will not accept someone who I would not be willing to give at least a tepid reference for (I’ve received a number of reference requests based on LinkedIn and don’t want to have to plead the 5th) and I also hesitate to accept someone who I would struggle saying how I know them (I don’t want 40,000 coworkers who I couldn’t identify).
On Facebook it feels more personal, so “ignoring” is a tough rejection – but if I don’t feel comfortable sharing my personal life with them, I don’t accept.
As for Twitter, I don’t think that I’d stop any real person from following me; I would think that the experience is quite different between following a few dozen people versus thousands.
It comes down to comfort level and what you’re looking to accomplish.
Comment by Stuart Miniman — October 1, 2008 #
Great points everyone BUT I’d like to challenge it. If you are looking to make money off your blog, advertisers are obsessed with the number. If you have 20 of your best friends subscribe to your blog that’s cool, but you won’t get money.
Comment by Dan Schawbel — October 1, 2008 #
Dan, I already responded to you at Social Media Today and you can read my thoughts there.
On your comment here about subscriber counts and ad money, if that’s the motivation for subscriber counts, then you need to put the money angle in your post, else you’ll continue to get disagreements from people like me, Greg, and Stuart.
Moreover, Dan, I know many people who published best-selling novels as debut novels. If someone can write a book to be read by millions without ever having written a book before, money will come to a blogger even if the subscriber count is low.
It’s the old saying, Dan: Quality over quantity.
Comment by Ari Herzog — October 1, 2008 #
Great response…the money example is obvious…but the subscriber count isn’t just about money..it’s about respect
If you go to a blog and it has a chicklet with 2 RSS readers, you won’t have much respect for it, especially if you don’t know the person.
Comment by Dan Schawbel — October 1, 2008 #
Not necessarily, Dan. Like you, I receive emailed Google Alerts for published blog posts that match certain keywords. When I click to those blogs, I don’t look at the feed count (if there is a chicklet for it) but respond or not based on the content and whether any comment by me would add value.
Comment by Ari Herzog — October 1, 2008 #
Dan,
In my opinion it depends on your objectives. To spread an idea – I would rather have 1000 loose connections with a permission asset to contact them anytime.
But if I’m looking for well thought out opinions – I would rather have 10 very close people – whom I could “trust” to offer those opinions.
Ed
Comment by Ed Welch — October 1, 2008 #
Great read!
Thank you.
-Steven Burda
http://burda.lyro.com/
Comment by Steven Burda — October 2, 2008 #
[...] anything else I can do for you, feel free to drop me a line.Dan Schawbel recently wrote about the number of friends vs quality of each friend. It’s an interesting post, that you should check out. His conclusion was this. “You [...]
Pingback by The Most Important Factor of Your Personal Network | Sui Generis — October 3, 2008 #