The eight ways you can be my friend (or enemy) online
Two posts caught my eye this morning:
Steve Rubel: The Web changes how we define friendship.
Donna Bogatin: Real friends don’t share.
I’ve been hanging out in my Kyte chat room on and off since Sunday and one of the most common misperceptions is how online worlds deal with the issue of “friendship.” The misunderstandings here are really deep. Particularly on how Facebook tracks your friendship online.
1) People don’t understand what the difference between a “real” friend and an “online” friend is.
2) People don’t understand that Facebook can tell the difference between my enemies and friends (and I have both on Facebook and Plaxo, since I accept everyone’s online friendship, if requested).
Anyway, I cover this in two videos:
Part I of the eight ways you can be my friend (or enemy) online. 20 minutes.
Part II of the eight ways you can be my friend (or enemy) online. 4 minutes.
I mention Mark Lucovsky of Google in this video because he Faceslammed me. Funny, Google’s new Facebook app doesn’t work for me. Maybe he should have had me test out Google’s Facebook application before releasing it to the world. :-)
Powered By 
August 28th, 2007 at 11:35 am
With all due respect, videos are a bad way to disseminate information, and so are audio podcasts.
You are brilliant, a role model for us all, but please consider making text summaries, and text versions of your recent controversial videos.
Video and audio are nearly impossible to parse, to quote, and to deep link.
Thanks, friend. Keep up the boat rocking!
August 28th, 2007 at 11:38 am
You just found #9: do you watch Scoble’s videos or not? Heheh!
August 28th, 2007 at 11:45 am
The Google App doesn’t work for me, either.
We have similar friends and apps but I don’t write on walls a lot. I figure that your wall is busy and I don’t much to add.
August 28th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Yes, i hope i can be your friend Robert but Kyte sucks as a way to distribute video. Quality is just too bad to watch. Put something in writing :)
August 28th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
[...] Robert Scoble outlines how to be his “friend” (Hint: live in [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
I may have said this before, but it bears repeating: Those of us who work in open offices and/or cube farms have a very hard time getting away with watching video during work hours.
Even if I could make the case to my boss that watching the Scoble Show has bearing on my work, it’s still disruptive for my co-workers.
August 28th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Headphones?
August 28th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
[...] Scoble pontificate about the value that things like Facebook friendships bring to the table and how easy it is to rebuke overtures of this so-called friendship all the while they try to make you believe that they [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Text translation?
August 28th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
P.S. Kyte is a resource hog in Internet Explorer.
August 28th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
So if I don’t use Facebook, we cannot be friends? Pitty :-P
August 28th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
re “Headphones?”
A fair point, but not every office encourages or even allows their use.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
1.) then find a new employer.
2.) scoble, try to go back to interviews with the power players.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
“People don’t understand what the difference between a “real” friend and an “online” friend is.”
Actually, I think People have an easy time with the difference, the problem is that none of the social networking sites have a mechanism for segregating your friends accordingly.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Yes, people don’t make difference between online friend and “real life friend”, which makes me think that they don’t really have real friends.
@William(#4) - Kyte has very good streaming.
If a video doesn’t brake in South Africa with our poor ADSL connections then it is quite good. And the quality is not bad at all.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Rohit: a couple new interviews will be up shortly on http://www.scobleshow.com — in higher quality than Kyte, even. :-)
August 28th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
I miss Robert’s writing. The video doesn’t do it for me for a host of reasons. The irony is that the video seems to devalue RSS. I want to read a whole article via my reader. In fact, it also seems to break your full feeds only rule in an odd way Robert. I realize you are in the video business these days but it would be nice to be able to read your stuff.
August 28th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
[...] How to be his friend or enemy [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
never accepted mine “online friendship” on facebook - a regular reader of your blog
August 28th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
[...] I wrote this post before Scoble, Steve Rubel, and others began a discussion on this exact topic. As it turns out, it seems people [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Paul … agreed 100%. I don’t have time to watch/listen to the thing all the way through. With text I can scan and read what interests me.
This does have a plus, though. You no longer need to worry about partial vs. full feeds.
August 28th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
[...] I read about 10 Ways to Hurt Your Blog’s Brand by Commenting on Other Blogs and The eight ways you can be my friend (or enemy) online and somehow they connected with my mood, spilling out the words [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Hi Robert,
The advantage of Youtube over TV is the ability to find the “home-run,” “touch-down,” or how Beyonce fell in Orlando in seconds and watching in a minute.
Long presentations (more than 2 minutes) is a step back in the fast notion of the sharing the info of Web 2.0.
Mario Ruiz
@ http://www.oursheet.com
August 28th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
[...] you stopping the Scobleizer at 5000 friends? You saw his Facebook friendship video lesson, didn’t you? Time is running out. Robert has booked 4900 Facebook friends, of all varieties, let Robert continue to thrive: Tear [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I don’t accept everyone’s friend request on facebook, thats crazy talk
http://www.drunkenpanda.com
August 28th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Deaf here - didn’t get a word of that. :(
August 28th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
[...] to criticism of his incoherent videos about would-be Google killers, he’s created a fresh set of incoherent videos explaining what friends are and how Facebook understands the meaning of your [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
[...] to criticism of his incoherent videos about would-be Google killers, he’s created a fresh set of incoherent videos explaining what friends are and how Facebook understands the meaning of your [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
[...] and Post References:Hugh MacLeod - gapingvoid.comRobert Scoble - The eight ways you can be my friend (or enemy) onlineSteven Streight (vaspers) - siterslux - [...]
August 28th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
I’m not a big fan of video either - text summaries are good.
August 28th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Robert,
I’m sure people such as myself that have hearing problems are a very small part of your audience.
I gave up trying to listen to podcasts a long time ago. The audio quality of most aren’t good enough for me.
I can read lips, so a video isn’t too bad if the camera focuses on the faces of the people having the conversation.
A written transcript is much better. Even if I didn’t have poor hearing, I read faster than most people speak. If a a video takes one hour to watch, the transcript can be read in 15 or 20 minutes.
August 28th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Right. Videos should be two minutes or less, and even at that, they have to be awfully compelling (no, how to be your friend is not very compelling). Also, Kyte doesn’t work as universally as other video platforms, so you lose some folks that way. Arrogance oozing from every pore of this blog.
August 28th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Sharing content thru video is good but Kytetv and the video quality sucks.
In case you are going to preserve these videos for historic purposes then better buy a decent camcorder or digital camera (most of them can record 640 x 480 movies).
I think more than the size of the video I would say the quality matters and that is where you need to improve on.
August 28th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
there is def a major difference between an online friend vs. a real world friend. it seems pretty obvious to me that people should realize this.
August 28th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
[...] The eight ways you can be my friend (or enemy) online Two posts caught my eye this morning: Steve Rubel: The Web changes how we define friendship. Donna Bogatin: Real […] [...]
August 29th, 2007 at 12:12 am
Now if Facebook could actually make meaningful sense of all the data collected, which you describe in your “seven ways”, that would be fantastic! I would love to see a *real* top friends list of people who are interacting with you regularly, as well as, have shared interests without you doing the leg work.
August 29th, 2007 at 2:02 am
This Friend vs. Enemy stuff is no new in the CyberSpace. A long long time ago, in a galaxy not that far far away, there was a world where people got flammed just by showing up in a group, no matter what they were going to say (or write, in this case). It was called Usenet ;-)
August 29th, 2007 at 8:19 am
[...] continue with the Scoble example, because it generated a lot of comments on his site from people who complained they don’t want to have to watch videos to get his messages. [...]
August 29th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Nothing you have to say is worth bringing my day to a full stop to watch your video. Nothing. I might be sitting with my laptop at a cafe & can’t watch it then. I might be on a dull conference call and skimming blogs. Most of all, maybe seeing the kind of disregard for users you exhibit just leads to me to the conclusion that you’re full of hot air. Ciao, bambino.
August 29th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
@15 - if you say so.. lol
August 29th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
[...] enjoying Scoble’s video entertainment yesterday, I underscored how Zuckerbeg’s Facebook knows, tracks and [...]
August 29th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
The fact that more people here are commenting on your media (a 24-minute long video in two parts) than on your message should tell you something very important.
I, too, don’t have the time or the inclination to watch you spend 24 minutes getting to the point, but I’d love to read an essay, or even watch a tightly-edited 2-minute video.
Also, I don’t use Facebook and you can’t make me. :)
August 29th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Its clear you will lose lots of your cubicle audience if they can’t quickly read your thoughts.
Fear of Boss rises with headphones on and lengthy video
August 30th, 2007 at 1:33 am
Oh - I wanted to know what the eight ways were, but I don’t have time to watch 24 minutes of video… I want to be able to scan text!
August 30th, 2007 at 4:36 am
Your content of late, Robert, has been utterly inaccessible to me. I’m profoundly deaf and, while I lipread on a daily basis, I am unable to lipread the vast majority of these videos. The quality is too low, the lighting is too poor and the framerates are too low.
If online content is moving towards video then I hope transcripts become commonplace or the web is devalued as a medium for anyone who can’t understand video for whatever reason (deafness, or just hard of hearing, or they just don’t understand English well enough to follow a conversation or monologue).
September 1st, 2007 at 9:10 pm
[...] 2nd, 2007 Stowe Boyd is angry that Scoble doesn’t provide a transcript for his videos. He doesn’t have 30 minutes to watch a video. Frankly, neither have [...]
September 4th, 2007 at 8:54 am
[...] The eight ways you can be my friend (or enemy) online « Scobleizer (tags: scoble) [...]
September 28th, 2007 at 6:31 am
[...] Scoble has gone into lots of details about the art of FaceSlamming and the difference between “friends” and “Online Friends”. [...]
September 28th, 2007 at 11:29 am
[...] and Facebook? What’s different? Why? What does friendship mean online? Watch Scoble’s take on Kyte TV (you may have to install Flash) and then ask yourself: Is Robert Scoble media? What does [...]
October 1st, 2007 at 3:05 am
[...] The eight ways you can be my friend (or enemy) online « Scobleizer [...]
June 10th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
[...] and Facebook? What’s different? Why? What does friendship mean online? Watch Scoble’s take on Kyte TV (you may have to install Flash) and then ask yourself: Is Robert Scoble media? What does [...]