My many online personalities

My last post made me think about the way I may have a severe split personality syndrome online.
I’ll elaborate. But please bear with me and all my numbers.

The first social networking site I ever joined was Facebook. That was about 3 years ago. I am pretty selective with my friends there (I don’t think I’ll ever hit 5000 the way Chris Brogan will).  Chart on the right shows that 43% of all my friends on facebook are from college or grad school (yes, i did this the long way). Another 17% are elementary and high school friends…I’m not going to break down what each category is (they’re pretty self explanatory). So, around 81% (college + hs + elementary + close friends + family + 2nd degree friends) of everyone I’m friends with on facebook I’ve met before I turned 22 and entered the job market. I’d say that beyond the 7% of close friends and family (those that know what’s going on in my life on a  daily basis without me needing to broadcast it on the internet), of the remaining 74% of some sort of school friends and 2nd degree friends, around 15% are directly involved or interested in my line of work (education, marketing, social media). That comes to about 11% of everyone. I’ll add the 17% of work related friends (ex colleagues, clients or ppl I’ve met thru work) and that comes up to about 28%. Heck, I’ll even add the 1% of facebook friends I’ve never met and claim they’re interested in what I do. It still doesn’t even come up to 1/3 of all my friends. My point being: over 2/3rds of my fb friends don’t care about what I do for a living (they may nod as I talk about it over coffee but they neither have an interest in the field nor want to learn more about it). The moment I post a link to an interesting article on, say, twitter tools, they go ‘what???’. But they do care about photos from my vacation or what my favorite restaurant in Skopje is or when we’ll be having our next PS Singstar tournament.

Enter LinkedIn. I’ve been on LI for a little over a year. Numerically speaking, I have less than 50% the connections on LI then I have friends on FB. 46% of my LI connections I’m also friends with on FB. Chart on the left shows pretty much the same breakdown as the one for FB. But here’s the thing. I use completely different criteria to select my connections on LI from those I use for friending you on FB. To become my friend on FB we must have either grown up together, or lost front teeth together, or skipped (or have been bored or excited in) class together, drank something together, partied together or gossiped around the office, more or less (I haven’t done any of these things with 1% of my FB friends). On LI, this doesn’t matter to me. You can be in India and in your eighties but I might see you as a valuable connection for my work. You may be in marketing or advertising or education and we may do something together along the line. Or I may learn something from you. Or you may answer a work-related answer I post. You see, 23% of my LI connections I’ve never met in my life. But a solid 62% of all my LI connections work in the same industry as mine or have some interest or knowledge in it. Here, very few people care about my cat the way people do on FB. But they care about whether I can help them with something work related. Which is nice to know.

Now enter Twitter and the problem in applying the same logic here. You see, on FB and LI it takes 2 to tango. If I am your friend, you are my friend too. For me to be your connection, you have to be mine as well. Twitter is different. There are those you follow and those that follow you; two not necessarily identical things (especially at volume — thanks god i’m not there yet!). I’ve been there for a little less than a month and have 59 followers and follow 51 people. Of the 59 that follow me, I only follow 30 (a little over 50%). (Beleive me, I do try to follow everyone that follows me but if you provide content with no value to me I quickly unfollow you.) Of the 51 I follow, 29 follow me back. Not that it matters, since I’ll concentrate on all of them (51) in my analysis (I think who you follow is more important than who follows you…but that brings up some issues which I’ll discuss in another post). Of the 51 I follow, only 3 are family/work/college buddies. That’s 6%. The rest 94% I’ve never met in my life. They are however (most of them at least) authorities or knowledge sharers in the fields that interest me. Yes, 75% of those I follow on Twitter are either in the same or related industry as mine.

So, there you go. 2/3rds of my FB friends don’t care about the work-related things I’m passionate about. Almost 2/3rds of my LI connections do. And 3/4 of the people I listen to on Twitter I do so only to learn work-related stuff from.

Which makes me think: Could this have anything to do with when I’ve started using each of these tools? Meaning: has me joining Facebook at 24 made me mold my FB community around stuff that mattered most to me back then (uhm, parties mostly)? Am I following those I follow on Twitter because I started at 27 and my main focus right now is on learning and advancing in my career?

Would the reverse happen if Twitter was around in 2005 and Facebook just opened up? Or is the nature of medium the factor that determines how you use it? What do you think? Have you looked at your online presence in this way? What have you found out? I’d love to know.

Thank you for reading.

Photo Credit > N e o G a b o X <