This is an article about friendship and how it relates to success. The article points to a study that suggests that the number of friends a person had when he/she was young can be used as an indication to how successful the person will be in the future. It talks about levels of intimacy as well. Some experts and interviewees go on to describe in what layers of a social circle different types of friends fall, and how many populate each layer.The premise of the first part of the article is that the number of friends reflects how adept a person is for social networking, which can be a key attribute to success. Sounds like a reasonable argument, but then again, what about that type of person I'm sure you know that hangs out with friends all the time and never seems to work? You would think that allowing some alone time helps you focus in tracing and achieving your goals. Also, Ebenezer Scrooge never struck me as the kind of guy you'd call "the life of any party".
I'll give this piece some credit, however, since I'm sure part of its goal was to make the reader reflect on the quality of his/her own relationships. It made me think about the people that fit the article's description of a close friend - several of whom I haven't talked to in some time. Well, maybe some of us are not good friends by conventional definitions, but hopefully no one begrudges me for that (not to mention that I personally think I used to be worse).
I also have to wonder how many meaningful relationships a person with 700 "friends" can have. You know, quality over quantity: few friends you really treasure vs. collecting people in Facebook (this, I admit, is a convenient argument for a guy with little more than 30 friends).
One last comment on the article: how frivolous it seems to count and classify friends!
... but I still think I'll start my flowchart.
