I have been thinking about this for a while and this must be a question posed by social media users, digital marketers. I say this, reasoning how much “value” can be placed on this. If there is any value to be put on it, as anything on the Internet is being measured by someone.

Is this friendship not really a percentage of trust that you have in the other part of the transaction. Yes, it is an intangible but it is a transaction, as it boils down to information being “sold” to a party. Ultimately we are sharing habits, likes and dislikes and general views on many topics. This is the ultimate information for digital marketers as they then can shape product/service offerings depending on the trend which is being written about, viewed on a viral YouTube video etc.

A colleague described it today as “how much information is given by both parties to one another”. I tend to agree with that. Is it real? That is really subjective in my mind as some “friends” could be people you have never actually met or it could be your next door neighbor.

I think it is also a bit of a deceit, as sometimes the friendship does not really exist. It is just to be seen by users and not a sign of real relationships.

Call me old school, but digital friendship, email, Instant Messaging and even phone calls are impersonal and keep people from meeting face to face. They might meet now and then but it does not replace real face to face talking and seeing a person’s facial expressions.

Ultimately it leads to a lot of bandwidth burned to view videos and pictures and text..