It’s nice to go somewhere and know that you’ll meet an online friend. I believe online friendships have great value, and always look for an opportunity to meet in person. Both at Cultivate and Story, I felt I was entering a room of friends. And, the conversations can continue so easily. Just makes me smile.

1. Jan stole my best example of using social media for good. But I think one of the best things about social media is it allows us as Christians to live out our faith more transparently. As I do my day with God, that gets reflected in my FB updates, tweets, and blog posts.

2. I limit my FB friends to family and personal friends. But I don’t see a problem with trying to get as many twitter followers and blog readers as possible as long as long as its done in a way that honors their value as a person and is not just using them to accomplish your goals.

3. The introvert/extrovert question has got the wheels spinning in my mind because I’m introverted but online I tend to be more of an initiator. Not sure how that works.

4. Jan had some great suggestions.

One other thing I wanted to add is Brogan & Smith recommend meeting a lot of people online and then finding ways to meet face to face. A couple weeks ago at Catalyst I met Tim Schraeder, Scott Williams, and Brandon Smith in person for the first time. Then yesterday at Cultivate I had the chance to meet Mary Beth Stockdale and Justin Wise and talk again with Tim. You guys are even more wonderful offline than you are online. And that’s just mentioning the people in this group blog project. I met lots of other people as well who I’ve only interacted with online until then. I would honestly say I enjoyed the relational aspect of those conferences more than the content of the sessions (and the sessions were great!)

I would like to read some more about personality types and social media, so if anyone knows of anything on that topic, let me know.

2. I see nothing wrong with racking up as many friends possible to support your cause or organization. The problem begins when we are ONLY interested in our cause or organization and are unwilling to extend the same friendship and courtesy to listen to the other voices in our sphere of influence.

3. I’m a extrovert born and raised so I can only speak to my experience. For me, social media and online influence can become addicting. All those people out there just waiting for me to become friends with them…all those networks and lunches and conferences and widgets and…okay, I need to count to three and relax for a minute…alright I’m fine…really.

4. Join the conversation…appropriately. Comment, “like”, RT, and repost. Know when to interject and when to listen and don’t be that girl/guy that hogs all the spotlight. (Nobody likes a social media whore.)

I have been wondering how Jesus might have used social media if he were around today.

The other side of the problem are the people that are so into “knowing” the other person that they never get around to sharing the gospel. Both sides have pitfalls.

I am most uncomfortable with Trust Agents around these types of areas. But that is probably in large part because I am not working for a company that sells anything. I don’t really have a message to get across. So that doesn’t get to me. What does get to me is building social networks to help one another. And when you think about it that way, then the larger the network (to the point of actually knowing what is in the network) the better the network is able to help one another.

If you just want the network to help you, then you want it really large because it is all one way. If you want the network to help one another, then it has to be a size where you can know the parts and connect them together.