A mile wide. An inch deep.

If you're like most people, you've got more than 100 friends on Facebook. If you're like me, you've got more than 500. Having 500 real friends is a physically impossible feat, though Facebook seems to have made this possible.

Somewhere between 100 and 500 friends, the makeup of my Facebook audience began to change. I started off friending people I know, but as time went by I listened to the "experts" (who tell us we need as many Facebook friends as possible) and eagerly made "friends" far and wide.

That's when it dawned on me. What if:

1. We join a social media site and get as many "friends" as possible. That's all fine and dandy and things are looking up.

2. It's no surprise — those "friends" are doing the same. After all, that's what we're all told to do, right?

3. Then, statistically speaking, every time my audience gains a friend or follower, the chance they'll read my updates gets watered down. After all, their Newsfeed is packed with messages, what's the chance mine will be seen? One in 500? Less?

4. Before you know it, the only people really paying attention to my life are my actual friends, my mother and a handful of creepy people. And let's face it, it was that way BEFORE Facebook.

I've seen this happen to businesses who try to leverage social media. Things go well in the beginning as their new "friends" respond to updates, but they're left wondering what happened once they gain several hundred followers. The first "friends" were the real friends. The latter were acquaintances. Lastly, they're "friending" people unlikely to respond to their message.

This trend of gaining hundreds, if not thousands, of "friends" literally creates shallow relationships. Professional marketers argue that it's volume that counts, but that's only true if you're selling plastic spoons. People know when they're treated like a number and I'll bet those professional marketers that their favorite marketing materials promise meaningful relationships, because that's what matters.

And that's what we'll come back to. I'll wager that the pendulum will swing when it comes to online relationships. We will, one by one, begin to wonder: In an online world, where's the value in meaningful relationships?

As we listen to the professionals who say we need lots of "friends" and we continue to "friend" and "follow" in some meaningless way until we have hundreds of them, we watch our messages drown in that ever-growing, ever-distracted crowd. That's when we're left to find that the best place to be heard is among true friends. And that's a status that has to be earned.


Next week I'll pose two questions:
1. What if the only people praising social media are the ones who make money on social media? ...and...
2. What if the only people making money on social media are the ones selling things about social media?