Like Euan Semple, I’m a little bothered by the notion of “friendship” as defined by Twitter.
It bothers me more than a little that Twitter automatically declares those whose streams I choose to follow as “friends” simply because I’m interested in the work they do and the interesting material often posted outside their blogs and on their streams.
I’d rather have the notions of relationships on Twitter split this way:
- at the top of the tree, an actual friend, with whom I have an actual relationship;
- next, colleagues with whom my relationship is professional, and;
- followers, who watch my stream out of interest.
That way, I could theoretically post different material for each group, mixed material for some and unmediated material for general consumption. This would be more like Flickr’s notion of Friends, Family and Public access for photos.
