friends

Just When You Think You Know Someone

Earlier this week, Rebecca Gill, a friend of mine in the WordPress community, shared her personal story of how being diagnosed with LADA: a 1.5 diabetic who isn’t quite type 1 or type 2 changed her life for the better.

If I ever question myself, I am reminded quickly of the gifts diabetes has given me. I see my healthy son, I feel his bear hug, or I hear his words of pride and praise when he tells someone new that his mom is a diabetic who takes good care of herself.

The day I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, I chose my son and his survival. The day I was diagnosed as a LADA, I chose to be a survivor.

It’s an inspirational post, but out of all the times I’ve talked to her, she never mentioned that she had LADA. It’s none of my business and I didn’t ask, but it reminded me that there are a lot of things I don’t know about the people I interact with on a daily basis in the WordPress community. Without her post, I might never have known this about her. Rebecca says it best:

I’ve known some people in the WordPress community for more than 6 years and yet, there is so much I don’t know about these people. Sure, I could follow them on Facebook, Twitter, etc and learn things based on what they share to the public, but without a good reason to do so, I feel like that’s akin to stalking. Just when you think you know someone, you realize you don’t know them at all.

I use my Facebook account and this site to let people know that I’m not as obsessed with WordPress as people might think. I have other interests such as good food, bird watching, trains, military aircraft, meteorology, astrology, the 90s, and more. Using these mediums, I specifically choose what I let people know about me. I feel like I’m a public person, but I do keep a lot of things to myself or to those who I consider personal friends.

Do I even want to know more about the personal lives of the people I interact with on a weekly basis? Yes and no. Yes, because it provides a foundation for a story because it adds context. No, because there are things I might find out that I can’t say which may really add to a story. Also, I have a big mouth and would rather not be entrusted with anyone’s personal secrets. I don’t want that burden anyways, so don’t give it to me!

Unpopular As Bad As Too Popular

Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb published an intriguing article the other day that dove into the question, How Many Friends Are Too Many? In his article, Josh takes the example of Jason Calacanis who follows 26,672 people (now at 29,978) and suggests that there is no way in hell that Jason can actually participate in conversations in any meaningful way with those who follow him. I agree.

I’m on Twitter myself, and I am following 338 people while 460 people are following me. Not all of those who follow me are participating with me in conversations on a usual basis. So far, I’ve been able to engage in great conversations with those who follow me, but when the conversation involved more than one individual, one of the biggest pains of Twitter shows itself. Twitter’s structure does not bode well for multi-threaded conversations and it’s too easy to get lost in the noise. However, I’ve been able to show that I am indeed listening to those who shout out at me, something Jason can’t vouch for.

But Jason has mentioned before, he uses Twitter more as a marketing, broadcasting medium than a conversational tool. Looking at his Twitter profile, it seems as though he at times participates in the conversation. But with the way Jason is set up, once he replies to something, the conversation is blown off the map. Not entirely his fault.

But back to the matter at hand. According to research conducted by Robin Dunbar, 100-150 people are the approximate amount which would comprise a natural group size in which everyone can really know everyone else. I can vouch for that as I’ve kept the list of people I follow down to a minimum and I pretty much know every one of them by avatar alone.

How have you been able to manage relationships with a large number of people? Do you exchange emails or messages on Facebook or any other social platform where you have close to a 1,000 so called friends? Do any of the conversations you have with folks online contain any value to you, or is it a hopeless feeling of being lost in the noise?

TwitterAdder 20 Random Friends

TwitterAdder.com Logo
For those of you having trouble finding so called ‘friends‘ on twitter, your in luck. Using TwitterAdder, you can now have 20 random people added as friends to your account.

TwitterAdder is the newest guy in the bunch to use the Twitter API. After you login to their site using your username and password, TwitterAdder then takes 20 random people and adds them to your friends list. I’m not going to give this service a try since I recently figured out how I want to use Twitter effectively. However, if you end up giving the service a try, let me know how the results turned out.

Twitter Blocks – A Different View Of Twitter

TwitterBlocks.com LogoTwitter has an interesting new page called Twitter Blocks, which allows you to view recent status reports from friends, and the people that follow them.

Twitter Blocks gives users the oppurtunity to take a deeper look at their network of friends. The light blue blocks refer to your own account, the red blocks are your updates while the grey shaded blocks contain updates from friends of friends.

Twitter Blocks In action

The Twitter Blocks page is sponsored by Motorola, so it’s nice to see that Twitter is finding different ways of making money.

11 Steps To Being A Good Facebook Friend

https://i0.wp.com/jeffc.me/images/valleywaglogo.pngValleywag has put together a list of steps towards becoming a good Facebook friend. Which ones do you think work?

The steps are as follows:

1. Get in the friend zone.

2. Be the interesting one.

3. Interact with your friends.

4. Let it all hang out.

5. Remember the reality curve.

6. Fake it just a little.

7. Don’t set your relationship status to “It’s complicated.”

8. Link your social profiles to each other.

9. Make mutual “friends.”

10. Leave a wall post on birthdays.

Bonus: 11. Forget about it.

You can read about these steps in more detail by clicking here Also, don’t forget to add me as a friend on Facebook. Step 12, ask people to be your friend.