Following vs Friending
I recently downloaded a new app to my iPhone called into_now. It is basically a social app that allows you to check in to what you are watching on TV. Like all good social apps, it allows you to see if any of your Facebook or Twitter friends had joined so you could “friend” them to get started. I am so accustomed to the “follow” version of “friend” (like Twitter) that it didn’t even occur to me that I would actually be sending friend requests to everyone I tried to “friend” (like Facebook). Few of my friends are as geeky as me, so none had joined yet, but several people I follow on Twitter had. So, since I figured into_now would have a more Twitter-like (public timeline) model, I tried to friend several people who I have never met without even thinking about it. When none of those people showed up in my timeline or list of friends right away, I realized that I must have sent them an actual friend request! Oh well, hopefully none of them mind.
Through this experience, I realized that I have become very accustomed to Twitter-like “follow” model of social networks. Very few new services have the Facebook-like “friend” model. One that comes to mind is Path, but that is for a very specific purpose. I don’t really understand why into_now chose this model, but that is their decision. I am writing this post to ask developers who choose to implement this model to include some sort of warning or confirmation before actually sending a friend request. When I tap somebody’s name to friend them, a dialog asking “Are you sure you want to send a friend request to this person?” that gives me the option to confirm or cancel would be very helpful. I know that LinkedIn requires an extra step before requesting a connection and am pretty sure Facebook does. That would make people like me feel a lot less embarrassed when we try to friend everyone we follow on Twitter, but have never met.
