Social Networks Are The Absolute Worst Place to Meet Friends
Let me explain.
When I got my first computer at age 12 (2001), I started using the internet to make friends online.
Forums and chat rooms, that was my jam. I was on them every day.
(To be honest, at the time, this wasn’t a very cool thing to do.)
But then a few years later something happened. MySpace and other social networks came around and dethroned my forums and chat rooms.
Suddenly everyone thought the internet was cool! But instead of having intimate conversations that lead to intimate friendships, I was blasting my thoughts publicly to the world on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Vine.
My forums and chat rooms died out. I became more focused on popularity.
Now don’t get me wrong, being able to blast the world with my thoughts is super awesome. There are over 100,000 people who follow me online now. It’s the most effective way to spread ideas, like I’m doing right now with this blog post.
But guess what? These social networks suck for meeting people and building real relationships.
Now you might be thinking “What are you talking about Matt!? Twitter and other social networks are awesome for building relationships!”
No! Maybe you can casually keep up to date with someone on Twitter, or maybe you can find someone on Facebook and start chatting with them, but social networks aren’t optimized for building intimate one on one relationships.
Let me explain.
This is why it’s hard to make friends on Social Networks:
- Social Networks are ridiculously massive. One monster of a community. It’s like if you put everyone in the world into one room and then expected them to go around making friends. This is tough because we have no filter, no way to find our “tribe” (the people who are like us).
This is why forums and chat rooms are much better places to discover and make friends:
- Instead of being massive and all encompassing, forums and chat rooms are micro communities. They are groupings of people who have come together around a specific topic or commonality. The rock climbers hang out together, the EDM lovers hang out together, the iOS developers hang out together, and so on. They make friends and find people they can relate to. This is how making friends works offline as well.
Now here’s the interesting thing that I am noticing.
People are once again craving these micro communities. People have had 10 years of gaining popularity online, and now they want to start finding people they can be friends with.
“Ok, ok, I get it Matt! I want to make friends online too. Where can I find these online micro communities?” Glad you asked!
Where to Find Online Micro Communities
1. Hamster Pad
Chat rooms are coming back in a big way, but instead of being hosted on AOL like they were back in the day, they are all on Slack.
To find hundreds of Slack chats head on over to HamsterPad.com, where you will discover micro communities for anything from iOS development, to coffee lovers, to video gamers, to people who love music.
There are over 100,000 people in the chatrooms on Hamster Pad.
2. Reddit
While some of the forums on reddit are rather large, there are thousands of smaller ones that are micro communities.
To find these communities you can check out RedditMetrics.com for the top forums for any topic you can think of.
It’s so good to see people go back to building smaller communities where they can support one another and build strong relationships.
This is where the internet first started, it’s not surprising that we’re doing it again.
I hope you find your tribe, or maybe, if you’re driven and a little crazy, you might even start your own.
