Having just published a new book--an event nowadays that requires authors to establish a "web presence" (read Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else you can broadcast yourself!), I was drawn to a post by Alexandra Levit on mashable.com. (If you're not familiar with it, mashable is a website with a wealth of information about social networking, so popular that it now outranks CNN on Twitter, according to one recent study.) I thought that Levit's advice was very good and added my own two cents in a comment, which naturally reflects my last three years of research and writing--not to mention all the messages and emails I'm now getting:
I think of sites in terms of their family/friend-to-CS ratio. Consequential strangers (CS) are people outside your intimate circles--and they comprise the bulk of our daily encounters. Our intimates know what we know, whereas our CS take us "beyond the familiar." In each of my social network sites, I have many, many more CS (even though the site calls them "friends"), and on Twitter, strangers as well. True,Facebook does has a good number of family, friends, rediscovered friends as well as consequential strangers from the past.
One of the suggestions in Levit's how-to was "set boundaries"--reserve certain sites for family and real friends, and others for business contacts--but, as I wrote in my comment...
...it's too late for me! The best I can do is restrict my online social time, And that's getting harder the more connections I make--even on the sites I regularly visit.
On Facebook I now have my "friends" (who are mostly CS, with a smattering of family and close friends thrown in--a mirror of my real life social scene), and I also check in on the CS group I started. I've been suggesting that people ask their friends and CS to join that group, and overnight we picked up more members. I like that, and it's great to connect, but the more people I connect with, the harder it is to stay connected, but I'm determined to at least try. It is, after all, the point of my new book!
On Twitter, for instance, whenever someone follows me, I contact them, asking, how did you find me and why are you following me? I don't bother when the "person" seems more like a bot, or when the photo is an obvious come-on. (Come on, really--do men actually follow anyone with big breasts?) Many don't bother answer, I think because everyone's out there to rack up numbers. Or maybe they're too busy posting themselves. A widely-reported recent survey found that at least a quarter of American adults who use the Internet are "creators"--they're blogging, making videos, posting stories on line. Who has time to say hello? But I, perhaps naively, want to connect. And others apparently do, too. I've met some really interesting CS that way, who introduce me to new ideas or just say something wonderful about themselves that tugs at my heart. Keep 'em comin' I say--that's what consequential strangers do for us.
I may eat those words, of course, because I'm already spending more time than I ever imagined tweeting, blogging, answering emails, looking at other people's links, reading other people's blogs, watching their videos. Only time, or my lack of it, will tell. Ergo, my new bumper sticker:
So many consequential strangers, so little time.
