Asymmetrical follow is a key point of danah boyd’s article — it creates a scale-free network that friend networks like AIM, MySpace, and Facebook can never create.
It’s hard to overstate how huge this tiny change is mindset actually is. Prior to Twitter most explicitly social software required symetrical relationships—in large part, I think, because that symmetry feels more human (humane) and much ESS is implicitly utopian.
A couple of years ago Fred Wilson wrote about feeling uncomfortable with the fan/follower designation used by most asymmetrical social software, and I have another friend who spent weeks trying (and failing) to find a term to use for these relationships that didn’t connote a sort of celebrity vs. fanboy relationship.
But think how often these days you hear someone complaining about either feeling obligated to reciprocate an unwanted friend request on Facebook, or about feeling vaguely guilty (or explicitly judged) for their decision to limit their Facebook friends based on personal criteria.
The two people in a given relationship may view that relationship differently, and they rarely have to codify the exact terms and boundaries for offline purposes; online, however, the limits of that relationship must be defined—and those limits are exposed to both parties.
(via whitneymcn)
Making something explicit that which is implicit is awkward. There is no good word for the result. I might add that you couldn’t explicitly follow/fan something or someone before bits became free to copy. I think this problem is really deep. How we interact with the world around us is changing. The medium is the message, as they say.
