Friending and following
[footnotes 1] It is also distinct from the idea of a "fan"—as employed on the WWW sites of businesses, bands, artists, and others—since it is more than a one-way relationship.
Although terminology has not yet evolved to distinguish the different types of social networking friends,[9] they can be broken into the following three categories.
[7] Strong ties can be made up of close family members and friends where self-disclosure, intimacy and frequent content occur.
[7] Weak latent ties can be made up of people within a similar geographical location or profession that can be used as a potential future bridge to other connections.
Turkle defines herself as "cautiously optimistic", but expresses concern that distance communications may undermine genuine face-to-face spoken discourses, lessening people's expectations of one another.
[10] Results from a 2007 survey the Center for the Digital Future stated that only 23% of internet users have at least one virtual friend whom they have only met online.
This results and other concerning issues are included in the book Networked: The New Social Operating System[15] co-written by Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman in 2012.
Judicial codes of conducts in the various states generally incorporate some form of provision that judges should avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
Whether this regulates and even prohibits judges "friending" attorneys that appear before them, and law enforcement personnel, has been the subject of some analysis by the judicial ethics panels of the various states.
They haven't all agreed on the guidance that they have given to judges:[16] A minority opinion of the committee asserted that there is a substantive difference between "friending" on a social networking service and actual friendship, and that the general public, being aware of the norms of social networking services, was capable of drawing this distinction and would not reasonably conclude either a special degree of influence or a violation of the code of judicial conduct.
