What does connecting on different social platforms really mean from platform to platform, and what are the differences?  As we see the online social networking space evolve and more new networks get created, we’re going to have to start paying attention not so much to the feature list of each new network, but more importantly on how they are each creating new definitions for “relationships”.

Mitch Joel just published a new post, The Trouble With Twitter – Confessions Of A Twitter Snob where he took a step back from his own decision process on Twitter and looked at his criteria for wanting to follow somebody or not.  After reading that, I started thinking about something that hasn’t really been talked about in the social web arena that I think we can all relate to: Getting rejected.

I started thinking about how getting rejected when trying to connect to someone online means something very different depending on which network it’s taking place in.  Getting rejected from a Facebook friend invitation might mean that your new potential connection doesn’t know you enough to comfortably say they have you as a “friend on Facebook”.  Considering usually people have a whole online representations of themselves on their profile, that’s a pretty mild consequence.  But rejecting somebody on Twitter could mean something entirely different and might even have a more substantial impact on them.

If users of Twitter see it as a way to represent their thoughts, opinions, emotions online (as is evident by the emotional tags being followed by the very cool Twitter visualization Twitori), and as a real attempt to connect with other people, then the consequences of a rejection escalates.  I’m no longer rejecting someone based on a stale Facebook profile that might include a long list of interests/weird groups memberships/random wall posts/selection of wacky widgets/fan pages/recent event activities (I could go on), but instead it’s a rejection based on the person’s recent stream of consciousness.  Getting rejected in that case could mean for someone that the other person isn’t interest in the opinions, emotions, and activities that they felt strong enough to share on Twitter in the first place.

What I thought about online social networks just a few months ago was that trying to make a connection to a new person through an online service without having formed any relationship with them in person first is almost cheating.  I thought of it as an attempt to make a beneficial connection for yourself without investing the time and energy in delivering benefit to the other person.  But the nature of the networks is changing, and if this is what people are posting to Twitter, maybe it’s an evolution in how people are creating new connections in a different, but equally valid way compared to face to face meetings.  If that’s the case, then  getting accepted, rejected, followed, or blocked are all going to take on new meanings depending on how people go about connecting online and in which networks it’s taking place in.

I’d appreciate any feedback on this idea or any interesting links that deal with this side of the social network game. Or if I’ve completely missed the mark on this let me know.

Given all this, feel free to connect to me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/malcolmbastien