Twitter - Real or Proxy Relationships?

22 Jan 2009

Twitter – Real or Proxy Relationships?

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I’ve been a huge proponent of Twitter since its release some time ago, but something about Twitter has started to bother me lately. I mean, sure Twitter does connect you to people you would have never met, but are these real relationships? If they aren’t, then do people understand that, or do they believe that they are relationships that have meaning? If they are indeed real relationships, then are they only going to last as long as Twitter is a fad, or are they more than that? I’m curious as to whether people on Twitter would still communicate if Twitter disappeared forever.

I’ve been wondering about the psychology of relationships on twitter in the sense that – they are nothing more than proxy relationships. I mean, I acknowledge and appreciate the relationships that I’ve developed on Twitter. I can join the same conversations that Lance Armstrong, Gary Vaynerchuk, or Scoble join. I can hang with Chris Brogan and Dean Karnazes, and I can actually see them interact with others. So what this tells me is that either Twitter is completely changing the way that social relationships are created and evolve, or people are becoming swept up in a torrent of delusional relationships.

Currently, I don’t have any answers, but I’m going to try and find some. I am going to do some polling and request some interaction from you, my reader, to see what you think.

My guess? Twitter is the middle ground between old relationships and new social patterns – the question is where will it all end.

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http://www.poverty101.net T Edwards

This is a really good question. I think that people lead simultaneous but separate lives both in the “real” world and on line. Most of us have work friends that we would cease to see if we left the job. We have on line friends that yes, in all likelihood, we’d forget about if we lost our internet connection. I think this constant variety and influx of people into our lives is what makes life interesting and the few long lasting “real” friendships we have is what makes us complete.

T

T Edwardss last blog post..Finishing My To Do List: Marketing This Blog
http://NathanHangen.com nathan

While I agree with you, I think that some people get so caught up in these “online worlds” that they forget where they were heading in the first place. At first, I really loved Twitter, but now it seems to be a new online game, similar to World of Warcraft, where followers are levels and RT are currency. It seems like a parallel movement rather than a forward one and it has me a bit worried.

I sense that most of these relationships are contrived, but I’m not sure if everyone else does.

I’m going to keep pondering this to see what I can make of it, but in the meantime I think I will start to use Twitter differently.
http://www.workhappynow.com Karl Staib – Work Happy Now

It’s not easy to build any type of relationship. Twitter is just another tool to help reach people that we wouldn’t normally interact with. I try to use twitter to reach out to others who I plan to converse through email, phone or conferences.

Karl Staib – Work Happy Nows last blog post..Your Big Dream for This Year