The recent Burger King Whopper Sacrifice campaign on Facebook has created a flurry of discussion about what it should take to “unfriend” someone and the social awkwardness it creates.
Some, like Henry Blodgett, have suggested that social networks need even more definition around our specific friend statuses. Please no! Whether you’re being unfriended, demoted or moved to a different category, the effect remains the same - someone wonders what they have done to deserve the status change. With this in mind, does creating new categories or labels really solve the problem or just compound it by adding more time and confusion?
Our relationships with people are in many ways defined by what we choose to share with them. Do we share funny jokes, political stories, our personal poetry or artwork, family problems, or music and movie recommendations? If users had the ability to choose what, to whom, and how things are shared, the need for pre-defined classifications is diminished by our ability to post personal insights to some while sending clever quips and quotes to others.
It seems the logical decision is to choose our audience and distribution method based on the information we are about to send. For me personally, information that is good for one-to-one sharing I send via email, while things that I want to share with a large audience I send via Facebook or Twitter. And for all of the modes of communication in between there are a slew of other social sharing options. Instead of choosing to defriend someone, simply share what you want, to whom you want, and how you want.
