Are Twitter friendships real?

As a ‘girlfriend guru’ and founder of Girlfriendology, I study female friendship on a daily basis. Women share their girlfriend stories, we communicate back and forth, and often, friendships sprout from little (sometimes just 140 characters) exchanges between like-minded strangers who soon become friends. At Girlfriendology, the community for women based on female friendship, we’re all about authenticity and inspiration – both I’ve found on Twitter.

Are these friendships real? In my opinion – YES!

Since signing up for Twitter nine months ago, I’ve met more friends through Twitter (and other social media sites/events) than I ever had at/during any corporate job. MANY more. I couldn’t even begin to name the number of people with whom I’ve shared conversations, interviewed for our semi-weekly podcasts for women (interviews with inspiring women), and the women and men who have helped me promote Girlfriendology and who have shared amazing ideas for growing this community for women.

Some of you may have found your way to Girlfriendology via Twitter – Welcome! It is great to get to know you and to find out about you.

While you’re here, look around. Sign up for the newsletter. Listen to some podcasts. Read the blogs. Leave comments. Share names of women we should interview for the podcasts or who might have a company we should feature in our newsletters or on our site.

Yes, I believe the friendships from Twitter are real. Sure, Twitter may change and who knows what will be next, but we’ve already started down this social digital highway and I don’t see us turning back to aimless solo surfing. We’re having too much fun with our friends – from Twitter!

CNET.com shared the following on Twitter Friendships:

Following and joining friends

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re able to send messages into the Twitter system, and your friends can find your account and follow your updates. Here’s how you can see their messages.

I am not yet following Brian. If I click “add,” I will be.

On the Web: to add a friend, first be sure you are logged into your account. Then go to his or her Twitter page and press the “Add” link in the “Actions” box. To find a user page, use the search box on your own Twitter page.

Once you click “Add,” you’ll start to see his or her Tweets on your page if his or her account is set for public access. If the account is private, the system will send a “friend” request that must be approved before you start to see updates.

You also can see who your friends are following by hovering your mouse pointer over the pictures in the sidebar on your friends’ pages. Those pictures are of their friends–the users they are following. If you click on one of those pictures, you’ll go to that user’s page, where you can add him or her, too.

You can see all the Tweets from any person’s friends by clicking the “With Friends” tab above his or her message window. Or you can turn that off and see only his or her Tweets by clicking the obliquely named “Previous” tab.

On the phone or IM: send the command follow username to register your phone or IM account to receive public Tweets from a user. You also can invite people based on a phone number: SMS add phonenumber to 40404, and you’ll start following the user at that number; if the person at that number isn’t a Twitter user, he or she will get an invitation to join.

Managing your friends is much easier by using a full Web browser, but you can do everything on a mobile phone if you wish. See this page of the Twitter Help file for full commands, including details on the all-important Leave (to stop following) and Drop (to remove from your friend list) commands.%

Share this with your girlfriends!

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Tags: CNET Networks, friendship, twitter

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Be a Better Friend, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.