It seems that there is a pattern with various forms of computer-mediated communication that for the first few years of the existence of a technology, it is acceptable for people to communicate/link with “strangers” that they do not know in other ways, but that this fades off over time.

For example, when the web was new, I remember people emailing me fairly casually about things that they had seen on my web-page, or else just to point out that they had the same name as me! This is different from mailing a focused question, more a kind of “hi, how are you?” sort of email. A similar thing was true for Facebook in the early days. Now, these things would seem weird, if not spammy or stalkerish.

I wonder if the same thing will happen with Twitter? Will it eventually seem strange to follow someone on Twitter who you don’t know face-to-face (celebrities and other public figures excluded)? I already feel weird about this with people who are in an intermediate zone between knowing and not knowing – let’s say someone that I met at conferences a couple of times over the last few years. How will this change, or is the one-way following on Twitter sufficiently different to the mutual-friending of Facebook?