The signing up of web entrepreneur Jason Calacanis to a somewhat unsavoury Facebook Group illustrates the danger of befriending strangers online.
It’s been a bit of game harvesting followers on Twitter, friends on Facebook and connections on LinkedIn with people desperately befriending strangers from around the world with little thought on who these people really are.
While this has been good for people who measure themselves by the number of people they claim to know, it really hasn’t added value to most people’s networks.
The real value is in connecting with people whose ideas, interests and lifestyles are of interest to you. It could be your family, your old school and work mates or someone who shares your passion for cat shampooing.
Reduce these social media channels just to a numbers game and suddenly these networks have no value except to the small group of uber users who’ve it their life mission to harvest a million followers.
For normal people with lives, careers and other interests there’s no point in treating Facebook as a competition to gather the most friends. The whole aim of these online networking channels is to enhance your life, career and interests.
That’s why we all should take care with the people we befriend online and only choose those who we know and respect. We are judged by the company we keep.