“Friendship in a Web 2.0 World”

Adam Walker Cleaveland muses over the meaning and quality of friendship in the age of social media like Facebook and Twitter:

“I have 1478 friends on Facebook, 179 connections on LinkedIn, 366 followers on Twitter, 682 people subscribed to pomomusings RSS Feed and an average of 700 unique visitors a day here at pomomusings. Am I truly “friends” with each of those people? Would I feel comfortable calling them up and having a conversation? Of course not. There are some people on Facebook who I’ve never met (and probably never will) who I am friends with. There are some people on Facebook who I disagree with very strongly who I am friends with. And there are probably even some people on Facebook who I don’t really like, but I am still “friends” with them for whatever reason.
 
So, are there levels of friendship? Or do these types of social networking sites simply downgrade our value put on friendship?”