Topology of your social media network really differs from a three most popular sites: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I am not sure who crafted the phrase:

LinkedIn is 4 people u know. Facebook is 4 people u used 2 know. Twitter is 4 people u want 2 know.

But in fact – that is exactly how my social networks are today.

My LinkedIn network of almost 2000 people seems huge, but it is a reflection of my job really. I run my own company and do meet a lot of clients and those that are in a process of becoming ones. I am an ‘Active User’ of LinkedIn. I am within those few per cent that ‘Publish’ as opposed to the vast majority that ‘Listen’. People from the recruitment industry who request a connection I do let in. Sooner rather than later I invite them to one of the conferences and actually meet them. I am guessing I have about 10% of the connections in LinkedIn that I people that just connected and we never meet. 90% of all my connections I worked with, or met on some event and got their business card. LinkedIn connections is for people that you know.

My Facebook network is about 100 to 200 people. In fact, I have multiple Facebook accounts, and every one of them has about 100 to 200 connections. This is my ‘Personal’ Facebook and I never managed to get all those under the same Facebook account. I have one with my old co-workers. One for the family and friends from the childhood, and so on. So yes, I have spent a lot of time with each of my Facebook connections and know them really well. On the other hand, it is quite unlikely I will meet more than 20% of them ever again! 80% live on all possible continents and have moved on in life. All we have in common is past. We like to remember those nice moments, but our paths in the future seem to be going in the opposite directions. Facebook is for people that you used to know.

My Twitter network is about 1800 followers and people that I follow. Interestingly enough, by Twitter network grows slower than my LinkedIn connections. I do spend more time on twitter every day than on LinkedIn. But publish less. I do not even tweet once a day on average. I use Direct Messages more often than tweets. I retweet rarely, and only the tweets from the people I really know well. If you analyse my twitter network it is really interesting:

• 1/3 of the people that I follow, they follow me back
• 1/3 of the people that follow do not follow me back
• 1/3 of the people that follow me I do not follow back.

This just shows that the majority of people in my twitter network – I actually do not know. With just 1/3 of them there is a bidirectional connection. Twitter is people you want to know.

How is your social network structured?