Mike Arauz is a strategist at Part 2: Spectrum of Online Friendship
The response to Tuesday's post, Spectrum of Online Friendship, has been overwhelming (translations: Italian and French). Some great blog posts by Gavin Heaton, Dan Howarth, bnox, and PSFK. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read it, to share it with others, and especially to everyone who left such thoughtful and though provoking comments.
I'm going to adapt this into a presentation (hopefully this weekend), so keep an eye out for it here on my blog and on Slideshare.
There were a few important questions raised in the comments that I want to respond to.
Click for full size image
Nancy reminded me that most online friendships are extensions of off-line friendships. So, who am I really talking about here?
This spectrum uses the relationship structure of people on the web who are reaching a point where they would actually say that most of their friendships are online only. While this is only a small fraction of all internet users, it's a quickly growing segment, as digital technologies enable us to expand our natural Dunbar number (which Faris raised and touches on here). For some people, it's even easier to maintain online only friendships (often with people in distant geographic locations) than it is with people you're expected to see in real life. Our traditional definition of friendship has evolved.
Some people have several hundred Facebook friends, thousands of blog readers, tens of thousands of Twitter followers. These relationships used to just be an audience. Now they're becoming a lot more like friends.
People who have the ability to cultivate meaningful relationships with tens of thousands of people have a lot to teach brands who are trying to figure out their role and their goals in the social spaces on the web.
This is what my spectrum attempts to articulate.
Several people raised the possibility of adding multiple dimensions to this spectrum. I would label this primary axis as "Investment." On this axis we are measuring the depth of investment that one person feels about another person's ideas/work.
Here are some other proposed axis (help me figure out which ones are most worthwhile and what they would look like):
Time
How long has this been going on? Time is a huge factor in this universe. All of these actions take time; and time is an increasingly hard to come by commodity in our digital world. If I've spent years along this spectrum with you, that means a lot for the quality of my friendship.
Reciprocity
To what extent are these actions and feelings reciprocated? Arguably the more balanced the relationship is, the more valuable it becomes.
Social Activity
To what degree and frequency is this friend active within their own network? Certainly as we use this as a model for brands this becomes an important factor in evaluating various relationships. Someone who's a prolific blogger or Twitter user in their own right will do more to raise awareness of you and your ideas than someone who rarely talks on the web, right?
The beauty of adding any of these as axis in a multi-dimensional model is that they are independent from each other. While I may have reached any level on the Investment axis, I could be just 1 week into the time axis, or the relationship could be complete unrequited, or I could be hugely prolific on my own channels, or not.
What's the ideal combination?
I'm going to adapt this into a presentation (hopefully this weekend), so keep an eye out for it here on my blog and on Slideshare.
There were a few important questions raised in the comments that I want to respond to.
Nancy reminded me that most online friendships are extensions of off-line friendships. So, who am I really talking about here?
This spectrum uses the relationship structure of people on the web who are reaching a point where they would actually say that most of their friendships are online only. While this is only a small fraction of all internet users, it's a quickly growing segment, as digital technologies enable us to expand our natural Dunbar number (which Faris raised and touches on here). For some people, it's even easier to maintain online only friendships (often with people in distant geographic locations) than it is with people you're expected to see in real life. Our traditional definition of friendship has evolved.
Some people have several hundred Facebook friends, thousands of blog readers, tens of thousands of Twitter followers. These relationships used to just be an audience. Now they're becoming a lot more like friends.
People who have the ability to cultivate meaningful relationships with tens of thousands of people have a lot to teach brands who are trying to figure out their role and their goals in the social spaces on the web.
This is what my spectrum attempts to articulate.
Several people raised the possibility of adding multiple dimensions to this spectrum. I would label this primary axis as "Investment." On this axis we are measuring the depth of investment that one person feels about another person's ideas/work.
Here are some other proposed axis (help me figure out which ones are most worthwhile and what they would look like):
Time
How long has this been going on? Time is a huge factor in this universe. All of these actions take time; and time is an increasingly hard to come by commodity in our digital world. If I've spent years along this spectrum with you, that means a lot for the quality of my friendship.
Reciprocity
To what extent are these actions and feelings reciprocated? Arguably the more balanced the relationship is, the more valuable it becomes.
Social Activity
To what degree and frequency is this friend active within their own network? Certainly as we use this as a model for brands this becomes an important factor in evaluating various relationships. Someone who's a prolific blogger or Twitter user in their own right will do more to raise awareness of you and your ideas than someone who rarely talks on the web, right?
The beauty of adding any of these as axis in a multi-dimensional model is that they are independent from each other. While I may have reached any level on the Investment axis, I could be just 1 week into the time axis, or the relationship could be complete unrequited, or I could be hugely prolific on my own channels, or not.
What's the ideal combination?
Friday, April 17, 2009
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2 Comments:
Mike -
Loved reading original post, just barely got to it today. The commentary was great and led me down a few exploratory paths and nice ideas.
You look at investment, tied specifically to behaviors or actions I take. One quick thought on this is that those stages aren't linear, right? I could reply to you on twitter as a way to connect or share my appreciation for an idea/thought/etc., and you may or may not reply. You may follow me as an attempt to build your following pool, that gives me the opportunity to direct message you--some private dialogue. However, you may not reply, again. So, my action may show my investment, but it really wasn't interactive or two-way. So, I just bounce back to passive or active interest until something changes, etc. And that may be OK with me and you. Make sense?
This clearly ties to your proposed reciprocity dimension. It feels that needs to be embedded into the scale of investment you already have because it gets to friendship and not just outreach. Reciprocity, however, has a spectrum, right? Initial response could either be for ulterior motives (I want to build my network) or relevance (that was good, here's what I think, give me more, etc.). One could safely assume that a pattern of reciprocity suggests authentic relationship/relevance, etc. This pattern fits across your idea of a time dimension. But, it seems to me the more telling is consistent patterns over time (repeated interaction over time, perhaps increased frequency means greater connection).
Social activity seems more about scaling than friendship, right? Whereas time and reciprocity are tied to the primary friendship story.
One other thought... I've found with the consumer journey or path work that we've done it has helped when we add context to each stage in a few areas: (1) emotion/mindset (what am I feeling or needing or wanting), (2) triggers (what got me here, what's likely to move me to the next), and (3) roles (what is the brand - or person-brand - job to help me). The three together help guide strategy for authentic connections along the journey.
Anyhow, just food for thought.
Thanks for the thinking and sharing.
Nice follow-up, and thanks for the mention.
One thing we've not really mentioned is the fruit that the spectrum bears. The goal isn't necessarily investment, or mutual friendship, but the value we get from collaboration – whether that's financial, or the creation of new knowledge simply for the love of it.
Look at this blog post for example. From your initial idea, which we've debated and advocated in various blogs and bookmarked/linked-to, we're collaboratively developing it. You've reciprocated our interest by commenting on our blogs and linking to us.
We're moving along the spectrum, not necessarily for the sake of developing an online friendship, but because we're developing an idea which will be of value to us. Creating new knowledge, if you will. And our increasing familiarity is a valuable by-product.
So it seems that one of the great things about online friendships is that we can be more explicit about the nature of the relationship, without subverting its development.
Does that make sense?
I don't think time is necessarily that great a factor. Movement along the spectrum can take weeks or years, it's not really time-sensitive. But I definitely agree with you and Maury that reciprocity is key to developing a relationship of mutual value.
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