Are my online friends for real?
As Facebook continues its explosive growth here's one question troubling me. Are my friends for real? — This week I received this intriguing message from a man who moves in London's new media circles. — He wrote: "I met somebody the other day who told …
Context & Ripple Effects
This column lands at the peak of Facebook's 2007 inflection: the Platform opened in May, commentary by late June was comparing Facebook to AOL and flagging an incursion into LinkedIn's professional turf, and longtime users reported a habit shift to daily visits and stacked apps. The friend list has quietly become an asset — something developers build on and rivals measure themselves against.
Against that backdrop, the BBC's question — prompted by a London new-media contact reporting people whose identities did not check out — aims at the input the whole boom depends on. The identity doubts cited are unconfirmed anecdote, not established fact, but they land on a social graph that the developer ecosystem is already treating as settled.
First-order effects
- Developers who rushed applications onto the Platform after F8 are building ranking and distribution logic on friend connections whose authenticity is now being publicly questioned — the graph's reliability becomes a product-quality issue, not just a user quibble.
- Users deciding whom to accept face the direct cost of Facebook's open-growth strategy: the same expansion driving the 'new AOL' comparisons dilutes confidence in any single connection.
Second-order effects
- LinkedIn gains a fresh argument for its walled, professionally-curated graph precisely when Facebook's fast-accumulating friend counts are being questioned — identity rigor turns from a limitation into a selling point.
- Application developers who leaned on raw friend counts as a trust signal may need to layer their own verification or reputation mechanisms, since the platform supplies connections but vouches for none of them.
Third-order effects
- If platforms monetize a social graph while leaving identity unverified, trust infrastructure — authentication, reputation, provenance of profiles — hardens into a distinct industry layer sitting between users and the networks.
- The tension between growth and authenticity forces social networks to define what a 'friend' legally and commercially means, a definitional fight that follows the graph wherever it is licensed or ported.
The trend: Social networks are scaling their graphs faster than they can verify the identities behind them, turning authenticity from a private user worry into a platform-design and liability problem.