Mine is bigger than yours!

What is it with people and their ‘connection/friends’ lists on business/social networking sites!?

Look around you in any network – professional or personal, from LinkedIn, to Facebook, Orkut and MySpace - and you will find most peoples lists growing by leaps and ‘founds’ every day!

Do people really have so many ‘friends’ and ‘connections’ or is this purely misplaced sense of popularity?

Are these really people you are ‘linked in’ or ‘friends’ with? Or are they just part of a need to say ‘hey look! mine is bigger than yours!’ with reference to shiny rocks when it comes to women, and you know what when it comes to men.

To me, these lists are just that – blatant displays of false popularity!

Let’s deep dive into these networks and reflect a bit. And I will take the example of Jane (name changed) to make a point.

Jane has 210 friends. But she regularly communicates with only around 12 of them. She occasionally sends out a ‘mass post’ to around 25 on her list. So who are the others and what are they doing there?

• Why is Jack on her list? She met him at a party for five minutes last week and they will probably never meet again… Is he just there to make her list grow??
• Why did she send a friend request to supermodel Anita who she met at a party last night? Why did Anita accept? Because Anita on her list would look cool? And because Anita was too drunk to remember Jane, but added her thinking she was someone important from the party?
• What will she say if someone asks her professional opinion about Jake, who she vaguely knew as one of the 23 trainees in her office way back in 2003. She has him on her professional network, doesn’t she??!

In defense of Jane

• She cannot be seen as a person with just a couple of friends – how uncool is that??!
• She really didn’t know how to block her obnoxious ex-boss Anil, who had nothing nice to say to her while she was working with him, and only told her ‘we love you and you are welcome back anytime’ in her exit interview.
• The same obnoxious ex-boss wants to be on her list, to pretend he’s popular even though everyone is leaving his firm – AND like Jane above, few people know how to say “Are we friends? Are you really a connection??!”. He also wants to keep tabs on who she’s connected with and who is saying what – big brother lives, even outside the office, and even after the resignation!!
• She’s not rude! Jane is well known in corporate circles – and she needs to project a nice, open image. So when random acquaintances want to get into her network, she doesn’t want to ignore them and come across as rude!?
• Jane is also popular in her family. So her sweet aunt Preeti will be shocked if she doesn’t add her to her list. But her aunt will be even more shocked when she discovers posts on Jane’s wall, and the naughty gift she received from Sana!

So what are Jane’s options?

1. She continues to add people and smile. Her list is growing. Bigger than Anita’s list!
2. She ducks out of this social networking site and joins another one that isn’t popular yet… and where she can interact in privacy with her really close friends. Until of course, the mob lands up there and she has to look for another new networking site.
3. On the professional network she can continue to smile and add people – and ignore mail that asks her questions which she isn’t qualified to answer – and tell people – ‘oh that.. i haven’t been there in ages!’

At the end of the day, there very few real people with real friends and professional networks. The rest are simpy herd-mentality wankers! And networking sites will grow because of the former, and then go bust because of the latter. 

Also check out this article in The Telegraph, UK: Facebook study reveals users ‘trophy friends’