Have you ever gotten a friend request from someone you didn’t know?  Social Networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are all about making ‘friends.’  But what is a friend really?  In recent time’s it has translated into a status symbol for popularity.

First of all, Facebook has a “Friends List,” and in my book, this list is a catalog of people who have raise their hand and said “YES, i would like to interact with you,”  It is not necessarily a list of your friends.

The simple Psychology behind ‘Friending’

We all have a natural desire to make friends.  When someone says “will you be my friend,” its hard to say no.  It appears rude in person.  On Facebook we don’t have eye contact but psychologically, we have a similar feeling.  We don’t want to say no and this allows Friend Farmers to use you as a number.

What is a Friend Farmer?

A Friend Farmer is a person who seeks to add as many friends as possible with no intention of engaging them on a personal level.  In most cases, the intent is to generate a list of people to blast messages via posts or messages or  send repeated friend, fan/like page, and event requests.

So what are some types of friend farmers?

“So and so has so many friends, they must be popular“

I always get a kick out of it when I see I have mutual friends with someone so I say, “how do you know ‘so and so’?” And the response is “I don’t, they just added me on Facebook.”  Friend Farmer’s rely on the kindness of humanity and request people to be their friend with no real desire to engage or interact with anyone.

“I’m an Expert: I have (this many) Facebook Friends“

In the social media realm, there are a lot of  ’experts’ around and they are staking their expertise on the fact that they have an account with a lot of friends.  How nice.  Question: If you walked in a room could you recognize most of them?  The answer is usually no, and the reason is that many experts are simply adding friends for numbers to appear more popular.

How to Spot a Friend Farmer

If the purpose of becoming friends online is to engage and interact the the easiest way to recognize a friend farmer is by how engaging they are.

First, when they update their status or post something, how many of their friends actually engage them?  My personal goal is 1 – 2%.  If I have 1000 friends, I would expect 10 to 20 interactions on my postings.  (This is in no way an industry standard, but a good indicator for me of how engaged my friends are).

Second, how often do they engage others?  For every one post, how much time does the person with tons of friends spend engaging (or commenting) on the posts of others?  If you look at someone’s page and all you see is them posting updates and they never comment, in my opinion that’s the equivalent of giving a speech or talking to yourself.

Contrary to popular belief, social networking isn’t about the you.  Its about your connections and how well you engage them.  If your intention is to grow your sphere of influence, be engaging.  Send a personal message with your request, and engage your new friends by commenting on and/or liking what they post.

If your intention is to gain as many friends as possible, remember the popular guy in high school?  Where is he now?