Earlier today Jeff Pulver and Mr Percy from AudioCodes had a Webinar the subject of HD VoIP. I signed up and got a link to the WebEx event.

So far so good.

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Friends. Taste the word.

Does it describe your Facebook contacts? What about your Twitter followers - or your LinkedIn contacts.

My guess is that when you think closely about these environments, very few are really friends in the original sense.

Why the use of the word Friend? Why not use contact or acquaintance. The worst offender is Facebook. Most of my real friends are in my Facebook contact list. A lot of people I know professionally are in my contact list - but they are not my friends. The only real distinction on Facebook is if you have access to my full or my limited profile.

If I told someone that they are an acquaintance instead of a friend - would they be offended?

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Ken Camp states that Less is More and the value of following few people on Twitter. It is a well written piece that a lot of people should read - and then re-read - and then try to understand.

Actually - I believe that it is not the number that is the issue here, it is the quality of the people you follow. This may seems like a no-brainer for old timers for (non-verbal) communication - but it is really not a no-brainer for a lot of people. I have seen the same of Facebook - people collect contacts. Even on LinkedIn some people collect contacts.

In principle I do agree with Ken that quality trumps quantity any time of day. However, there are exception to the rule. I do follow a very few people that are following a couple of thousands people. My reason for following these people are not that I need them to listen to what I have to say. I really do not care if people listen to what I have to say - it is not important for me personally. I do follow these people simply because they provide high quality content.

On the other hand - if people decide to follow me I do sincerely hope that it is because that I contribute good content. That is fine with me. It does not boost my ego - it does not boost my self confidence (yes - I know I am an arrogant pri*k). I contribute because I seriously believe that I have something worth reading. If not, I rather shut up.

One issue is the current crop of Twitter clients (in lack of a better word). Most (all?) clients do not support something as simple as filtering. Unless there are filtering capabilities built into those clients sooner or later people will move on to less crowded services. If I had such capabilities today I could have filters for "friends and family" and then work related matters (which is my primary reason why I use Twitter). I can not ditch my friends and families from my Twitter feed. I also refuse to have more than one Twitter account.