Since scrolling through my feeds I can't get Bette Midler out of my head singing You Gotta Have Friends. I guess it was only a question of time with all of the friend and follower adding and subtracting that is happening on Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, and the like.
Rule of thumb. Once any Internet fad attains quasi-mainstream acceptance, it will soon be dissected on blogs.
There is now a discussion starting up about what exactly makes a friend and how the web might shift how we use that word.
Steve Rubel says The Web Changes How We Define Friendships and Rex Hammock is saying that When The Word Friend Means Anything, It Means Nothing.
My opinion? The whole web friendship thing is big, messy, full of gray areas, complex, still evolving, and perhaps troubling. Just like friendship.
Sooner or later, a social site will start using the term neighbor instead of friend. And then where will we be? Talking about how virtual fences make good virtual neighbors. It'll happen.
