I celebrated a birthday last week and something amazing, moving actually, happened that I’ve never experienced in the past – I received about 300 personal birthday wishes. Some came in through personal contact but most through email and facebook. This post isn’t really about me but it’s about the idea of moving from 40-50 birthday wishes a year ago to more than 300 – how is that possible and what do they mean?
I wondered how many of these wishes were sincere. As I replied to each wish I discovered that about 80 were from friends (some very close) – people with whom I actually spend time with; 150 or so from friendly acquaintances – those who are primarily business contacts with whom I have had face-to-face conversations and the remainder from facebook friends, with whom I have never met but have communicated through email and some on the phone. These contacts include customers, partners, vendors, competitors, analysts and other peers. Could these possibly be sincere wishes? I concluded yes. I believe that some virtual friendships begin for selfish reasons but over time turn into true friendships, potentially lightweight, but friendships nonetheless.
Allow me to explain the selfish comment. In this new world of social media – connections and credibility are king. This fact drives connections between people. Oftentimes, the individual with lesser or matched credibility will strive to connect with one with greater credibility and hope for reciprocation in an attempt to enhance their own personal brand. For example, I have “friended” Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, Marc Benioff, John Battelle, Tim O'Reilly, Evan Williams, and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies – as they accept, my credibility builds. Now, I have to provide value to these individuals or the relationships don’t work. Since the initial requests, I have spent time with each of these individuals, albeit brief in some cases, and mutual value has been created. If and when mutual value is created then the total value of each individual relationship is increased by the connection. I think that this approach is based on concepts that can be explained by Game Theory, and works really well when two parties find Nash Equilibrium.
Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others. While initially developed to analyze competitions in which one individual does better at another's expense (zero sum games), it has been expanded to treat a wide class of interactions, which are classified according to several criteria. Today, "game theory is a sort of umbrella or 'unified field' theory for the rational side of social science. In game theory, 
Nash equilibrium (named after John Forbes Nash, who proposed it) is a solution concept of a game involving two or more players, in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain by changing only his or her own strategy unilaterally. If each player has chosen a strategy and no player can benefit by changing his or her strategy while the other players keep theirs unchanged, then the current set of strategy choices and the corresponding payoffs constitute a Nash equilibrium.
What does all this mean? I receive many friend requests and accept most for the same reason – I know that we can add real value and credibility to one another and most everyone deserves a shot at that. If we can help each other out then the sum of the two is greater than the parts. So, how do we move from mutually beneficial virtual relationships to friendships? We add time. Over time - days, weeks, months or even years, enough value is provided and personalities shine through to begin to develop friendships. I have experienced this with Dave Morin, David Armano, Auren Hoffman, Mike Volpe, Jeremiah Owyang, Charlene Li, Aaron Strout, Colin Browning and more than 100 others – you get the point. I have the great fortune to have developed friendships with many of these individuals. We may not hang out often but it sure does feel nice to receive a birthday wish from them. I’m one lucky 35-year-old dude :) .
Thanks for the wishes – I sincerely appreciated them.
Cheers!
Mike = @mwalsh
