I have to remember to give Sarah Houghton-Jan a big pat on the back next time I see her for her post on social networking software. In it she risks ostracism de-friending š to articulate some of her gripes about the dilution of social networks. One gripe in particular is one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately:
And then there are the new friend requests. A lot of these friend requests are from people I donāt know at allā¦but I have a sense of guilt that I would offend or upset someone if I didnāt say “Yes, Iām your friend now.” … As a result, my list of “friends” has become quite meaningless. There are people on the lists who really are my friends, others who Iāve perhaps shared one e-mail with, and others who I wouldnāt know from a hole in the groundāand they all have equal weight as my “friends.”
I get friend requests in different networks (Facebook, LinkedIN, Flickr, Twiter and Ning) all the time. And 80% of those who add me I do not know. I used to add everyone who added me, but now I don’t and I feel bad about it. If I added everyone to my Flickr contacts, my contact photostream would include lots of pictures from people I don’t know and they would make it hard to find the pictures from the people I do know. If I added everyone to Twitter, I wouldn’t be able to use the site to keep up with my friends. But now I have 56 friends and 150 followers in Twitter and I wonder if I’m mortally offending the people I don’t add. It’s fine if they want to follow my Tweets or my Flickr photos, but I hope they won’t be hurt if I choose not to follow them. I wonder if I offend people when I don’t add them, but if I did, the tools would no longer serve their purposes.
I’m curious about how other people deal with this. Do you add everyone who adds you regardless of whether or not you know them? Do you add people you don’t know? If someone doesn’t add you, does it hurt your feelings? Do you think the term “friend” in these social networks has meaning if you add people you don’t know at all? I don’t know that people add certain people because they’re a “status symbol” to have on your list, as Sarah suggested. I assume it’s because they are interested in the person or think highly of them. It’s like subscribing to someone’s blog. Only it really does complicate the whole vetting process if you really don’t know the people who you’re affirming as your friend.
I really do think that these tools will stop being meaningful if people friend folks regardless of whether they know them, respect them (in the case of LinkedIN), or find them interesting (in the case of del.icio.us). But I, too, feel the draw to add everyone who adds me because no one wants to hurt someone else’s feelings. Oh what a tangled Web!
This is an excellent question, and certainly something that I struggle with myself. I treat different channels differently. I almost immediately established a rule for LinkedIn that I must know you to add you. This is because of the purpose and general use of that service, which implies much more trust than, say, a Flickr relationship.
For Twitter, I established a policy of accepting every friend request I received, and now I find I’m up to 82 friends and 89 followers. I did this more out of a sense of wanting to find out what it might be all about, but now I wonder if I’ve gone down the wrong road. For me, the jury is still out — both on this method of interacting as well as the entire service itself. But I’m having a number of doubts.
So yes, this is an excellent question to be asking, and often. I’m not convinced I have the right mix of online relationships, and now that I think about it, I’ve always had my doubts — from the mid-80s when I was first puzzling out what LISTSERV was. It’s good to think critically about these tools, and determine what the appropriate mix of channels there may be for our purposes and the various styles of interaction they each may require.
This is exactly the kind of critical thinking about new technologies that brings me back to what you write time and again, as it does others. Thanks for sharing your own doubts and struggles, as that helps illuminate and clarify our own.
I am looking at this from a different perspective, as I am new to the library profession. I do not understand the necessity of “friends” I don’t know, but I feel obligated to ask people or to accept friending. I don’t know a lot of people, so it seems to be one way of networking. It feels a whole lot like voting for Homecoming Queen, and every social site is a different school. The number of “friends” one has can also be a reflection of how active someone is on a site. I accept every friend request, because I think that people feel a little pressure to ask me in the first place. But a real friend will loan you money. I am one of Roy Tennant’s Twitter “friends”, and he has no idea who I am. I hope he doesn’t need a ten-spot any time soon. . .
You worry about this stuff becoming meaningless – but I’d suggest that you start by assuming that they’re intrinsically meaningless. When the server goes down or the company gets bought out, you still know who your friends are, right?
As for the friend request thing, I wrote this about it a few months ago: http://onebiglibrary.net/story/fermented-and-sad . Haven’t found any more hours in the day since I wrote that.
Question – why would Sarah “risk ostracism” if she’s negative about social networking sites? I see her post more as a “here’s what I’m experiencing, here’s what I’m going through” type of thing. Some people will agree, some won’t – but ostracism? Not sure about that one…
But then, that’s just me š
Each service gets a different level of response from me. When I first started using Twitter I had an open service, but after a while I noticed lots of people who would add me and 16,000 of their other close friends. I felt too exposed for a service for which I have limited use, so now, when I post to Twitter I only broadcast to friends. Twitter, for me at least, is best used for a very close group of friends or as a method of pushing out very important information. An example of the latter would be an Emergency Broadcast System Twitter service.
I am more likely to get requests from Flickr users to add me, and what I like about Flickr is the levels of connection. I don’t mind if someone adds me, and I feel no guilt if I do no reciprocate. I usually check their photo stream to see if there is anything I like about their photography (or for clues as to why I was of interest to them) and if they are good photographers I will add them. But I reserve “friend” status for people I know or amazing photographers.
Being a bit older I haven’t found (or been found by) many classmates on Facebook, but luckily my many years online has kept me from being completely friendless there. Same goes for myspace, but on myspace the spam and abuse is higher so I am more often to get requests that I quickly deny.
I imagine this is very different for people with high profiles (jessamyn comes to mind) and/or people who have formed many professional friendships/groups via these services (librarians such as yourself, etc). But I think for the average users they fall into three broad categories: (1) “friend whores” who accept all invitations for friendships and actively seek out friends based on very little real connectedness, collecting friends; (2) “cliques (in a good way) where the persons only connect with people they may know “in real life”; and “everyone else.” š
In general, like RSS feeds, I try to allow many people into my online life at first, but if my interactions with them do not grow, I cull the list until it is a more manageable group for me.
Thanks for the opportunity to chime in. Get it? Sorry. Bad Twitter joke.
David, I was being kind of jokey with the “ostracism” thing (maybe I should have written “de-friended”), but I guess it didn’t come off that way.
I wouldn’t ever think that Sarah would get ostracized, but before the whole Rochelle Hartman Second Life fiasco, she might have gotten really slammed over it. I remember how Rochelle got attacked when she had criticized Second Life based on her own personal experiences, but I honestly think people have gotten better about not taking criticisms like that personally since then.
I find the whole concept of friending online to be rather nebulous – and I just don’t really get it. Many sites don’t require you to be friends with people to interact with them. For example, on Ning, what does it really mean for people to be your friends? So, does it even matter? Why should there even be friends on this site? I do think that Rhonda makes a good point about using friends as networking tools, though. I’m guessing that many people feel the same way as she does – feeling obligated to issues friend requests. I (as a rather introverted type who has a limited number of offline friends) very rarely invite anyone to be my friend. For me, it isn’t a question of whether I think someone is worthy of being my friend as much as it is a question of “would this person think of me as their friend?” I don’t want to ever impose on anyone. On the other hand, I have accepted all friend requested that I have been issued – even though I have never heard of some of them.
This leads to the fact that there may well be an interesting divide on this issue. People who have bigger names in libraryland probably get overwhelmed with friend requests – while others are looking to get their name out there. I, as a relatively small fish, find myself overwhelmed by all of this social networking – so I can understand how difficult it must be for people with wider reputations.
So, what are the rules about online friends? I haven’t met in person most of the people that I communicate with online – does that matter? At what point, can I call them my friend? And more importantly, at what point would they consider me to be their friend? Should my feelings be hurt if I were to ask someone to be my friend and they refused? I don’t believe so – but human emotion can be funny. I still don’t know. It is all very strange.
I try to keep my social networking to people I feel I know — because it really does become meaningless without that facet. And there are other problems with having thousands of friends on social sites. At a recent poster session I did on campus, I was trying to convince students to be circumspect about what they put in Facebook, and one girl was being totally dismissive, saying, “My profile is friends-only. No one else can see those pictures.” My colleague said, “Well, how many friends do you have?” “Like, a couple hundred.” “And do you know and trust all of them not to share those pictures with people you don’t know?”
Dead silence.
Communities are built around connection and trust, and online social networking is just another community. We all have to define our trust and our connection and our community, for ourselves. And then not feel guilty about doing what’s right for us, even if that means rejecting friend requests from strangers.
As someone who has a lesser (or non-existant) profile in the larger 2.0 world, I think I must have a slightly different perspective. Being very well-known must change things significantly.
That being said, the friending issue for me depends on how I perceive my purpose in a social network. For myspace, it’s personal. I don’t want people as a “friend” if I don’t know them. I came into it for personal reasons, and restricted my page because I want to be free to express myself with my friends (bad poetry, vacation pictures, etc.) without fear of professional shame. š
For Facebook, I see it as a professional tool. I want students, colleagues, etc. to friend me so I can be a human being / librarian in their “space”–to see what they are doing on the news page, and to generally be in the loop of life at my university or with colleagues outside the university. For our 2.0 regional conference, we invited everyone who signed up to our Facebook Event. That meant inviting people on and off facebook, university administrators, and our speakers–and I’ve friended them all. And we’ve had several people join facebook just to join the event. The Event is open–and I think the more the merrier. Maybe someone else will write on the wall!
For Library 2.0 Ning, I friended everyone who I respected and recognized. I think I did see it like subscribing to their blog, and not a personal friending. I just don’t know people personally in the 2.0 world–so I would have had a empty friend box otherwise. And I try to check the pages of the people friending me to be sure it is a professional connection.
I gave up on Twitter a month ago, so I can’t say there. Wore me out.
And for the rest of my social networks, I’d say the same. I sometimes use the features that restrict access. I don’t always want anonymous friends. But sometimes it’s okay. And I don’t think anyone ever should be mortally offended at not being accepted as a friend. Again, my perspective is different than someone with a higher profile.
When I teach 2.0 tools in our library, I emphasize that these tools should only be an extension of how you want to be in the world. That’s why they call it the “Live Web”–moving our lives online. We shouldn’t have to lose control of our identity there in the process.
I’m probably less involved with social networks than most here (“antisocial” has such a negative ring to it), but I’ve thought about this. (I get the sense that you have to hang out a lot at some social-network sites for them to make sense, and that doesn’t work for me, for various reasons, concentration being the major one.)
I’m semi-restrictive about LinkedIn, turning down requests from “people you went to UC Berkeley with” (geez, 6,500 of my nearest & dearest!) or, in general, people whose “first degree” networks seem vast and who I’ve never heard of.
So far, I’ve been pretty open with Ning–but I find myself wondering “how do you actually remove yourself from Ning,” given the value I have or haven’t found so far from the Library 2.0 and Blogger spaces…and the incredible slowness of the thing. (I think the answer is that you can’t, as with most good web software, assuring that the “user” count just keeps going up, up, up. Hotel California has nothing on the social web.)
Then there’s Meebo and LSW, the first time I’ve tried letting chat run with a “social” situation. But there’s no friending there–still, I see real connections. Fortunately, it’s a small group,
Are these people my friends? Depends on your definition. Over the last month, I’ve gotten a pretty good impression that a bunch of people I’ve never met really do count as friends–and particularly over the last four days. On the other hand: My LinkedIn network (to two degrees) added precisely zero to the list of people I thought I should send early- email to, and my degree of interaction with the Ning people has approached zero, even though I’ve tried at times. (I’m not on Flickr–my wife’s the photographers, still film–or Facebook [yet] or Myspace [yet].) And, of course, I’m one of several million ghost avatars in SL.
Add it all up? I think the most important friendships have come from avenues that aren’t considered social networks–blogs, regular old boring 20th century email, and lists. For me. YMMV, as always.
I’ve found that I limit my friends to people I know in real life. However, the one exception I make is for other librarians. I figure it’s just a matter of time until we meet each other, right? It’s a small, small library world…
There’s a problem with the use of the word “friend” in many of these cases. They’re not really friends. (See Unshelved strip from 8 Feb 2007: http://www.overduemedia.com/archive.aspx?strip=20070208)
As was said a couple times already, the best way to deal with requests is as it fits the system. But generally, I have to “know them” to friend them. But those quotes means that I may just know them virtually. But I might also know them purely through the friend request. Often when you get the request, you can see some information about the person requesting the connection. Learning a little about them may make you realize that this person is someone you would like to be friends with.
I don’t think that you should feel guilty about not paying attention to everyone who wants to pay attention to you… you are higher in online social status than most. I attended the SirsiDynix wiki session that you presented on, not the reverse.
Further, I think that the term friend is often used too literally in social network discussions. Social networking sites seem more like a means to an end rather than a structured entity that has to be used for specific purposes. I think their success comes from their being so nebulous. Everyone is going to go into these sites with different preconceived notions about what they are going to use them for and it tends to frustrate users who want structure (*raises hand timidly*). I use MySpace to keep track of friends/people/entities of interest these days, but my notion of the site has morphed drastically over the past couple of years.
Good topic. I think Matt’s right and I don’t think you need to be so concerned about making people feel bad. I’ve taken to being a bit cautious about my friend-adding. As well, I try to be more careful in when I send someone a friend request. If I know someone well, great, but if I don’t, then I usually try to say something about what our connection is/might be, so the person has some context or reason why I might be adding them.
I figure that one of the points of these networks is to network, obviously, so sometimes I think adding people you don’t know as well is a good thing; yet, adding willy-nilly seems to just create clutter. If I get a friend request from someone who I have no idea who they are, and I can’t figure out any reason why he/she might be connected to me, I nearly always turn it down. As such, if I send someone a friend request and we don’t really know each other I wouldn’t feel bad if he/she chose not to add me.
Some of the networks are more forgiving than others to those who want to de-friend non-friends, too. Facebook, for example, lets you silently de-friend people, which I think is a Good Thing, in case you accidentally add someone you thought you knew or something.
I have all had all combinations and permutations of experiences with the social networking that you can probably think of, and most have been positive or at the least neutral. In some cases an initial “friending” has led to meaningful exchange and even meeting up. In some cases it goes no further than a click.
Now, a couple years into this, I am more cautious adding, especially if there is not enough info on the profile. If a direct message to the friendly tune of “who are you and why are you adding me” yields cryptic or no info, no add. I am noticing more corporatey profiles showing up not only on MySpace which is filled with them, but on Twitter and Facebook. Individuals pimping relevant wares, great. But companies relying on free sites for their marketing, while somewhat creative, are not going to be added by me. People who I don’t know – I am getting more restrictive about just because I am getting overwhelmed by all this stuff even though I love it. š
Yep – I missed the humor! that makes sense. But I do like “de-friending” better š Thanks for the clarification…
Interesting post and great comments. I have a couple of thoughts:
Speaking as someone who has a smaller blog readership and a shorter speaker resume, social software has provided me with connections to colleagues that I never would have had opportunity or courage to make otherwise. I see Ning, Facebook, Twitter (tumblr, jaiku), and to some extent, flickr, as ways to connect with other librarians more frequently than at conferences. It’s tremendously important for us to connect with each other, for no other reason than we do and care about the same things. It’s vital to feel validated and that you’re going down the right path. I guess *that* is what 2.0 tools and “friendship” with other librarylanders does for me.
I like the concentric circle approach of flickr–someone can be a “contact,” “friend” or “family.” I like being able to limit photos to a certain group of people yet add someone whose images I like as a contact. I do not reciprocate contact adding on flickr if I do not like the person’s images; that’s what flickr is all about. I was a little sensitive about this at first but have grown thicker skin.
Purely communication sites are somewhat a different story. I like the detail request feature of Facebook, though I feel like a prat using it, sometimes. I have added everyone on Facebook who has added me (though I must say some people get “poked” more than others. heh.) I have found a few folks on Facebook through their blogs or other doings in libraryland, but I’m not hurt if they do not add me in return. Disappointed, maybe, but not hurt: Facebook is more personal, I suppose. OTOH, I have immensely enjoyed its silliness and am glad of the connections I’m forging there.
I was excited about Twitter at the outset, until people that I wanted to have tweet conversations with did not add me back–simply because they did not know me and already had dozens of followers, I am sure, though it made me feel rather Stuart Smalley for a while.
LinkedIn is another story; it seems to pivot around actual personal connections, which after being momentarily puzzled by this, makes sense to me. IMHO, it’s trying to remedy this whole issue; the way the site works implies that a “connection” is a “connection”–I would never walk up to Roy Tennant in real life and say, “Hey, you came to my library ten years ago to consult on our nascent digital library! Would you give me a job?” So I can’t do that on LI, either. š (ftr, I would never do that to anyone who is “only” a web 2.0 connection, either!)
Thanks for the comments on this post; it’s been an interesting discussion.
Given that I don’t add most people who add me to Twitter, I can tell you exactly why that’s the case. I want to use Twitter to keep up with my closest friends and people I really know. I can barely keep up with the updates of those folks as it is; adding more would make it impossible for me. If I added everyone who added me, Twitter would become something I would be overwhelmed by and I would stop using it. I’m on the verge of that as it is.
I like making new friends, but I don’t know if Twitter really facilitates new friendships. I think blog conversations and IM are much better ways to get to know someone. I’ve made a lot of friends from people who originally I just knew as commenters on my blog.
I’m terrible with names, so I’ve probably not added someone whom I have met and do know (but with those usernames, sometimes it’s hard to tell), and I wish Twitter had some way that you could add a little message to your add (kind of like Facebook has) to explain who you are/what your connection is.
I definitely agree that there are some communities you need to be more selective in. In Facebook, I pretty much add everyone who adds me who is a librarian or whom I know from other parts of my life. The same goes for Ning. Adding more people doesn’t really make your use of the site impossible or unwieldy as it does in Flickr or Twitter.
I think of online networks as just that – networks. People don’t have to my “friend” to be friended by me – it’s just a way for me to keep up with others with similar interests and vice versa.
I do agree with the LinkedIn thing – in a way – I think of LinkedIn as a professional network – so anyone who shares my profession and knows me (even if it is only online) then I try to connect with them – you never know when you’ll need that network of people.
All that said – I really haven’t stuck with Ning much – I got swamped with friend requests and honestly don’t think I know even 10% of the people who are my “friends” – plus it’s one more place for me to look – and right now I just don’t have the time.
So – for the most part if I know your name I accept you as a “friend”.
People I friend are people I tend to respect. A good example of this is the Ning Library 2.0 site. If someone doesn’t have any background info listed they are not asked to be my friend, nor are they accepted as friends.
You don’t know me Meredith (or maybe you do?). Either way, I respect what you do. You add something to my professional life and, therefore, I consider you to be a “friend.” Same thing with Michael Casey… Think about this; some of us use pseudonyms in addition to our actual identities online and you might be “friending” us on multiple levels…
Some of us might work right along side of you and you don’t even know it!
Wow, what a great thread. Like Nicole above, I’ve always looked at the links on these social software sites as indications of interest (not of any real representation of friendship or of significant social networks). If I link to someone on one of these sites it is because I want to see what they are doing in that space (delicious, facebook, flickr). I don’t even have to know you or want to get to know you. I realize though that many perceive social networks to be more than (I think) they are. It is an interesting dynamic that the meaning we attribute to these services varies from person to person… how fitting.
Personally, I have a number of different accounts for my social networking sites. I’ve had a livejournal for about 8 years now, and my friends list there are mostly old friends from a particular friendship circle that I stay in touch with. Similarly, one of my MySpaces is my “personal” MySpace, to whom I make a point of only accepting friends requests from people whom I’ve actually met in person. Then, there’s my “blatant self-promotion” MySpace, that basically anybody can join if they like.
I guess it’s about customising your “online communities”, and having different levels of acquaintance. Yes, it’s still a case of categorising people according to how well you’re acquainted, but I think that’s okay. It’s not like you’re inviting them over to your house for dinner.
Flickr was my first big social networking site, and as I’ve gotten into the others, I’ve been frustrated by the single level of contact in so many of them. Someone is either a friend, or not a contact at all. With its inclusion of family as a contact category, Flickr is my ideal.
It’s interesting that a number of you have mentioned being very open with friendings in Ning/Library 2.0! I friended and affirmed requests from anyone whom I knew IRL, had networked with, read their blog, met in Second Life, etc.. Yet even after that, it seemed everyone in the network was requesting friendship, which seemed redundant. Having said this out loud, I now need to be honest and go reject all those lingering friend requests so they stop haunting me when I log in. š
Twitter is one where it is disappointing when the contact/friend-ing isn’t reciprocated. I’ve found myself starting to reply to people who haven’t reciprocated my contact, then realizing they won’t read it anyway, so what’s the point? Still, I thought I’d have closed my postings to friends only by now, but I’ve been friended by some people whose twittering I enjoy and I wouldn’t have known of otherwise, so I’m still open.
I think a problem here is in the terminology. ‘Friend’ has very specific implications and connotations for me and they are really not appropriate within the context of online systems. I’ve got lots of people that I know, either online or in ‘the real world’, and they’re not all friends. Some are ‘colleagues’ ‘acquaintances’ and so on. But not friends.
I had a problem with people adding me as a friend when I started out using these systems, but to be honest I don’t really care now. I’ve done a mental global delete with ‘friend’ and replaced with ‘potential contact’ and that works much better for me. I have no problem with the idea that someone might want to stay in touch, to read what I write and so on, because I’m doing the exact self same thing when I read their weblogs- but that doesn’t make me their friend or them mine, but as a contact – yes, they’re exactly that.
Once you can make that leap the whole thing becomes easier to deal with. Ideally I’d like a Flickr type solution where I can have contacts, friends and family, all with different levels of accessibility, which much more closely relates to a real life situation.
I also believe that social networks are about creating networks, and the term ‘friend’ is perhaps not the best choice.
I like the feature in facebook that allows you to fine tune what updates you get to see of your friends – i.e. since Facebook doesn’t show you absolutely every update that happens in your friends’ groups, you can set your preferences so that you see more status updates and less group joinings, for example. I haven’t tried it myself, but I believe that you can fine tune it so that updates from certain people are shown more than from others. The nice thing about the Facebook feature is that others don’t get to see if you’ve adjusted their settings, so you don’t have to worry about offending anyone.
It would be beneficial if other social networking applications had similar features, so that you could still establish a network of contacts, yet also use the applications to keep up on your closer friends without being flooded with updates.
I like Phil’s definition = “potential contact”!
Meredith, it’s not just you wondering about this (although I wonder about it from the not-high-profile side of things)! There are several blogs I read frequently (yours included), and those bloggers say things I think about. When I join a SN site, I often see those bloggers among the identities in my real world friends’ buddy lists (which adds in the six degrees issue). And, I’m curious to hear what use said bloggers will make of the tool… but the friend thing is odd, and. I’ve been trying to figure out how I decide to ‘friend” LISbloggers, because I have “friended” some, but not others. And it can’t just be based on comments, because I’ve commented here before and I haven’t asked you to befriend me on any of the spaces where I see your name…
I keep thinking about like-mindedness. I’ve stopped blogging, because updating became a chore not an exercise or a pleasure. But I have found a number of like-minded folks out there in the biblioblogosphere (where I don’t pull my weight), and and friending through SN feels like it might be a way to make the acquaintance… which raises the question of ‘meeting new friends’ in SN space…
see, if i kept up my blog, I could have posted this comment there, and elaborated. and then people would follow the trackback to read me and want to befriend me on Twitter and Facebook and…..
From The Onion:
MySpace Outage Leaves Millions Friendless:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/myspace_outage_leaves_millions
OMG, that is too funny, Dave! I love it!
I’ve lurked for a bit here, but I thought I’d weigh in on this one.
I’ve used LiveJournal since I was in college, for about 5 years now, and this has been an everpresent question in that circle. What does it mean if you don’t friend someone, if you decided you don’t want that person friended anymore and defriend them. It has caused far more drama than it should.
While I’m not a bit fan of SixApart (the company that bought out LiveJournal), one of the things they did right with Vox – their new social networking/blogging platform, was making connecting/friending/privacy options very transparent. There are three levels, family, friends, & neighbourhood. Consequently, I add everyone who adds me to my neighbourhood, add only people I know fairly well to my friends, and have a family level for people who I’m really close to. Posts, photos, anything you upload can be designated viewable only to that group, and you can easily read any of those groups making the sorting through posts obsolete.
LiveJournal allows the same sort of thing, albeit a bit more clunkily, with friends filters.
With FaceBook, MySpace, Flicrk, etc, I tend to add only people I know, or I choose to allow them a limited profile as opposed to a full profile. Even with LiveJournal, I add only those people whose posts I’m interested in reading as otherwise I’m wading through a lot of extraneous posts. I no longer feel badly about this practice and often in my profile I state up front what my ‘friending’ policy is. So far I’ve avoided any drama on the topic!
I consider someone to be a friend if I have a friendly relationship with them, whether it be IRL or online. For example, I consider you to be a “friend” type person, even though we’ve never met in person and have had only minimal interaction online. I’d probably buy you a drink if I met you at a conference, so that qualifies you for being “friended” by me on a social network.
Occasionally, I’ll friend people I don’t know and have no relationship with at all. Mainly it’s because they seem like people I’d like to get to know at some point. Most of the time, I reject friend requests if I don’t know the person, and I feel no guilt about it whatsoever.