Are bi-directional friend links of Facebook and LinkedIn passé? FriendFeed and Twitter use uni-directional "fan" links.

FriendFeed and LinkedIn demonstrate the power of uni-directional "fan" links, also used by Facebook for public personas (and musicians, bloggers, and politicans so popular that they hit Facebook's 4,999 friend technical limit).

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*** Note 1 (of 4): Why? 10,000 people can make a "fan" or "following" link to you, but you have the power/choice to link to only 50 people and keep your life manageable. ***
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I'm a newbie to online social networks, having only two contacts on LinkedIn from Oct 2004 to Nov 2007, just because two close friends badgered me with invitations. Turns out, they weren't even heavy users of online social networks. :-)

I only started using Facebook in July 2007 because I wanted to send some African dance photos to a cute lady in Australia. :-)

Then I shifted to Tribe.Net where most of my Burning Man and dancing friends are.

Finally, I tried LinkedIn in Nov 2007. Bingo, 20-25% of my Harvard college 1982-1990 friends were there! I've been having a blast speaking with friends from 20-25 years ago. Last week, out of the blue, I got a LinkedIn invitation from a high school buddy I haven't seen in 26 years. Go, LinkedIn, you rock!

The future of the "link". Who knows what might happen with today's bright engineers, writers, designers, and visionaries?

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*** Note 2: I would like many different types of "friend link" or "fan link". How about a range of "invitation links" and "response links"? ***
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For invitations I would like a cross between Facebook "pokes" and Friend "friending". Maybe not as elaborate as "Superpoking". But the LinkedIn "connection" is too limiting. How can I separate my high school & college buddies from my past business associates?

Some people use LinkedIn as a glorified address book (ala Plaxo), advertise their services like LinkedIn is the 2008 Yellow pages, are trying to find jobs, or trying to recruit employees and management. Other LinkedIn people are "Open" or "Libertine" networkers who valiantly try to get 40,000 connections.

Do I really want my LinkedIn account to look like a Yellow Pages? Joe Bartling's paper has a good discussion of this issue, but I don't totally agree with his approach.

I received a wonderful e-mail from a 1986 Harvard classmate declining to connect because she only wanted to connect with people she knew well. Nicest refusal I've gotten so far. Style! That was nice. :-) Some people keep very closed high-quality networks of people they can personally vouch for in work situations.

I've ended up trying a mixed approach in LinkedIn over the past 5 months (somewhat Joe Bartling's paper).

a) 80% of my connections are people I know in person.

b) 15% are people who've invited me, or people I've invited because I've been impressed with their real-life activities, research papers, insightful journalism, or website quality.

c) 5% are the Top 9 people on LinkedIn (who's mega-connections help me separate the inactive and active from the 24.5 million LinkedIn accounts - maybe only 21 million accounts still exist, but I don't know how many people are active. Some of my friends only check LinkedIn every few months. One active LinkedIn user took 5 months before accepting my invitation, but that's another story.).

In practice, I almost never run into anyone (with 10+ connections) who's not 3-degrees-of-connection away from me because of the Top 9 LinkedIn people.

However, this experience on LinkedIn has suggested to me that I would prefer access to different types of links. Now I'm in the quandary of fielding LinkedIn invites from people who might be interesting, but wondering how to protect the privacy of people in my network. Not sure. And should my personal friends have access to my general business network or my respected work colleagues?

Some proposed "invitation links"
1) I-am-a-Fan of X
2) I-am-a-Work Colleague of X
3) I-am-a-Casual/Hobby Friend of X
4) I-am-a-Personal Friend of X
5) I think X is hot
6) I want to be a friend of X
7) I would like to business network with X
8) I want to party with X
9) I am-a-family or relative of X
10) I would like contact email from X ("heavy-weight communication")
11) I would like a Twitter address from X ("light-weight communication")
12) I would like a website address from X
13) I think X does very good work.
14) I think X does fantastic kick-butt work.
15) I have personal experience that X does very good work
16) I have personal experience that X does fantastic kick-butt work.
17) I think X is a very empathetic person.
18) I value X as a good friend.

And general or fuzzy "invitation links"
19) I would like an undefined business relationship with X
20) I-am-a-Business Contact of X

From the past 10 months of trying social networks, it appears that people use INVITATIONS as COMMUNICATION (even the infamous Facebook application invite-SPAM described in BJ Fogg's Stanford class on Designing Facebook Applications).

BJ Fogg is currently teaching a Spring 2008 "Psychology of Facebook" class which is swamped with 800+ participants (many non-Stanford business professionals).

So far, the responses to online invitations have been limited in choice.

How can I quickly say (with one mouse-click on a pull-down=menu) "I can't accept your business invitation right now, but here's my Twitter address (or website URL)"? Right now, it takes too long!

Let's turn invitations and responses into real communication.

For "response links" and "relationship links", I would like to have all of the following additional choices:
1) X is-a-fan of mine
2) X is-a-work-colleague
3) X-is-a-casual-friend
4) I-am-in-conflict-with-X
5) X-is-not-a-friend of mine
6) X-is-my-Direct Report
etc...

I think there's a need for conflicting invitation response links. LinkedIn removed my invitation without e-mail privileges because I had 4 "I don't know" refusals. I knew 2 people very closely (one from working together a few months ago) & I wasn't sure about the other 2 college classmates because my memory was very fuzzy after 22 years.

Their "I don't know"s messed up my LinkedIn account for 1-2 weeks, until LinkedIn removed the ban after I e-mailed nicely.

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*** Note 3: There are many advantages to leaving "friend"/"connection" relationships fuzzy. ***
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You can downplay or upplay your relationships for business negotiations. I am a 16-yr friend of Mr. or Ms. Big. Yeah, but how close a friend?

And maybe you don't want the I-am-madly-in-love-with-X combined with the response I-am-in-conflict-with-Y.

My age 40-45 Harvard cohort mostly stays away from Facebook because they want work & personal personas (Only 2-3% of Facebook).

I feel that it will be too difficult and time consuming to use Facebook's current method of security control in create personas.

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*** Note 4: In my opinion (IMO), we need unidirectional "invitation links", "response links", and "relationship links" as basic components of social networks. ***
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It's been fascinating to watch the evolution of the Internet since 1980 (I missed the first 2 years). And it will be interesting to watch people's behavior on Social Networks over the next 25 years.

For example, take Bill Gates behavior on Social Networks,
1) Facebook 2007 - Bill Gates profile unsearchable, but his friends list is viewable.
2) Facebook 2008 - BIll Gates profile now shows up in searches, but his friends list is private.
3) Facebook 2009 - Will Bill Gates use Facebook's new features to make some of his profile viewable to Friends of Friends?

4) LinkedIn 2007 - Bill Gates is not on LinkedIn.
5) LinkedIn 2008 - Bill Gates joins as #21,xxx,xxx. He has a featured in LinkedIn button. "Specialties: Personal computing, operating systems, technology, philanthropy". He has 4 friends. Wonder who the lucky 4 are. Hope he doesn't get too much invite-SPAM on LinkedIn, and he stays part of the social network. Can we invite him onto FriendFeed?

ENIAC -> Scientific Computing -> Mainframe -> FTP -> TCP/IP -> Minicomputer -> Databases -> e-mail -> UseNet News Groups -> Microcomputers -> Spreadsheets -> Word Processors -> DeskTop Publishing -> BBSs -> Videogames -> Mosaic web browser -> Webpages -> Blogs -> Netscape IPO -> Altavista -> Yahoo! -> eBay -> HotBot -> Napster -> Google -> YouTube -> Flickr -> Facebook -> LinkedIn -> Twitter Microblogging-> FriendFeed Lifestreaming -> ???

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Robert Scoble and Louis Gray just wrote wonderful articles yesterday on the importance of PARTICPATION and DISCOVERY in making a "living" social network.
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Great articles on the use of "comment" and "like" to get involved creating an interesting community.

I think we are just discovering the basic tools of online communication, facilitation, and community building. Personally, I feel the term "media" might be really 20th century. The line between traditional media, alternative media, professional and amateur "bloggers", and personal journals/diaries is really blurring. And becoming fascinating and exciting! Great time to live. :-:

Just hope FriendFeed survives invite-SPAM, like-SPAM, and comment-SPAM. Unfortunately, many of the top commenters at Amazon.com seem like SPAM posters (from WDSM 2008 conference at Stanford).

Personally, I got hit by the "like" limit this week at FriendFeed with only 160 "likes", so don't jump in too fast, and DON'T SPAM.

The really interesting FriendFeed page to watch [Scobleizer.com - Thu 5/1/08]"
See who's articles Robert Scoble liked at FriendFeed

Participate. Participate. Participate. Repeat. [LouisGray.com - Thu 5/1/08]
See who's articles Louis Gray liked at FriendFeed

See who's articles I liked at FriendFeed

- Mitchell Tsai (Harvard '86) - CEO, Spiritual Business Companions : FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Facebook