When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Bernice Bobs Her Hair, about the transformation of a lumpen cousin from Eau Claire into a belle with a wicked line of party patter, social success was visible--if there was a line of men waiting to cut in and dance with a girl, she was popular. Now, Facebook friends and Twitter followers and other social media rosters fill the same function. Or do they?
Recently, I'd unwittingly conducted an experiment in measuring my own popularity and name recognition. An zealous underling updated my Facebook profile by sending out friend requests to everyone in my combined address books. I went from some 200 friends to nearly 600--with only 6 people sending me "who the hell are you?" emails. I figure this is probably about half of the recipients of the request, which isn't a bad average. Still, I'm a wallflower compared to Andrew Breitbart who's got 2,300 friends, or Arianna Huffington with nearly 4,958. (Virginia Postrel has some 700, and her own devotee group, but then she's a person of charm and substance. I'm just chatty.)
Facebook has a 5000 limit, and some experts think that hitting the magic number doesn't mean much. The average user has 100 friends, and I did notice, not that this proves anything, that people who had very few friends or were concerned about privacy, were the people who wanted reassurance that I wasn't a spam-bot. I accept everyone's friend requests--being a Facebook pal doesn't mean I'm having you over for birthday cake. Slate's Farhad Manjoo was a little more blunt--get on the bus, Gus--
Nobody avoids meeting people in real life by escaping to the Web.
If anything, the opposite is true for me--the more F'bookers I know, the more places I go. What about you, DG readers? Leave a comment, scoot me an email, or find me on.... Facebook.
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