And Your Friends are My Friends...The Spectrum of Digital Friends

I enjoyed reading Mike Arauz's presentation on The Spectrum of Online Friendship - his "hero slide" above has tapped into something very interesting - your digital friends are not your real friends.

In fact, a recent Facebook study suggested only 4% of your friends in Facebook are people that you regularly communicate with. Mike's model above is an interesting way to stratify your friends based on depth of their involvement with you, and it applies whether you are a social media celebrity, digital influencer of participating brand in the socially networked world. I've also provided my own examples of what trait each level might have attached to it, from blogging behaviour, Facebook socializing and Twitter following:

Passive Interest - you stroll on by and consume content  i.e. Blog Visits, Facebook members/fans, Twitter reads 

Active Interest - you stroll on by and make yourself known i.e. Blog comments, Facebook Wall comments, Twitter followers

Sharing - you go out of your way and repost content i.e. Blog linking, Facebook feed activity, Twitter retweets

Public Dialogue - you make individual contact with person/brand i.e. Blog explicit referral links, Facebook profile message responses, Twitter replies

Private Dialogue - you establish one-to-one contact with person/brand i.e. Email/Contact from blog profile page, Direct messages on Facebook & Twitter

Advocacy - you passionately embrace not just content but the person/brand overall i.e. Adding blog widget, Becoming Facebook fan/event attendee, Referring and hashtagging on Twitter

Investment - you twin your fate and aspirations with the aspirations of the person/brand i.e. Authoring a collaborative blog/interviewing on blog, Organizing a Facebook group, Organizing a tweetup/Regular advocacy of tweets