FreshNetworks Blog

I was in a meeting last week where somebody said that somebody they had never met counted them as one of their oldest friends. Social networking sites and online communities give us the opportunity to find and socialise with people who share the same interests as us, wherever they may be. Geographical constraints are no longer such an issue and niche interests are less niche.

Some people say that online relationships will not replace real-world relationships, and I agree with them. Rather online relationships add a new category of friendship that was not easy to get previously.

Real-world relationships tend to start with experiences, be it a school, college, university or workplace, a neighbourhood, a hobby or even a party. You meet people at an experience and the relationship starts from there, and this original experience will always remain the one thing you have always shared. Online friendships are, on the other hand, built on interests. You share an interest and meet in a forum or community, you identify people who’ve been to the same country or stayed in the same hotel as you, you have the same hobbies or the same political or social beliefs. However your relationship develops, the original interest will be the one thing you have always shared.

I think that this distinction helps to understand how people bond online, and how relationships can be built in online communities and social networks.  It is no good hoping that people will form bonds or friendships just because they are a part of the same social network. This is a shared experience and the realm of real-world relationship building. Rather you need to find interests that will unite individuals and let them share in and build on these interests together.

This weekend, I have a house guest staying for a couple of weeks. I’ve never met the person in the real-world, but we’ve been friends online for years. We bonded over shared interests and hopefully over the next week or so we’ll build on this with some shared experiences.

For me, the opportunity to build friendships online isn’t a replacement for real-world relationships, but the opportunity to build friendships for very different reasons, and of very different kinds. And it’s exciting to live in a world where both kinds of relationships can exist.