I have friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter. There is a temptation to think that these are two names for essentially the same thing. That Facebook and Twitter have just chosen different terms to describe the same thing in order to differentiate their offerings, distinguish their brands. But actually there are some fundamental differences between 'friend' and 'follow', and the two concepts signal very different types of site and user experience.
There is a basic and fundamental difference between these two ways of getting to know people in social networks and online communities. To 'friend' is a two-way process; it requires both parties to agree that they want to connect with each other. To 'follow', on the other hand, is where one party finds somebody they are interested in and tracks them, with no need for the followee to give their consent. So friending is two-way and following is one-way.
At FreshNetworks, we build online communities with both types of connection. Which one you use, if any, leads to a very different user experience, and suits a different type of site.
To friend
Friending suits sites where we are interested in personal connections. Where we expect people to identify others like them, that they share experiences with, are in a similar situation to, or have similar interests to. Both parties are interested in connecting and so both have to feel that there would be a benefit from this. It is a high-intensity connection.
Friending allows users to follow what each other are doing - they may be interested in the same discussions and so want to know when their 'friend' has added something. It allows users to navigate their way around the online community based on the activity of a smaller selection of people they have connected with. At its most developed, friending allows a user to create their own sub-community of people that they feel close to and are connected with.
Friending really works when you are building a community with persona types who really want to share their experience with individuals across a range of topics and areas of the site. Where people are going to be able to quickly identify people they want to connect with in this way. Either by showing shared areas of interest, concerns or ideas. They want to engage with each other and that is what friending helps them to do.
To follow
By contrast, following is a low-intensity connection. It suits sites which are very much content-led with discussions, reviews or ideas take priority over the individuals who suggest them. One user needs to identify that they are interested in the content that another user has posted and that they want to be informed of all other posts that they make. The are less interested in engaging with the other user, sharing ideas and discussions with them, or even conversing with them directly. They are more interested in the content the other user creates and wants to read more of it.
Following is great for search. It allows users of the online community to select people whose content they admire and then build a large feed of such content. They might then use this feed to find out what is new, as an entry point into the community and the discussions.
Following really works when you are looking to build discussions on specific topics and want people to gravitate towards one set of discussions rather than another. It can be great when building a community around product reviews as users are typically more interested in certain types of product. It is also great for sites where there are a number of different discussion types and certain users are only interested in certain ones. But following works less well where you are tying to engage people across the content, and critically engage people with each other.
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