Can social media make you more popular?

We used to measure our popularity and successful relationships by the number of friends we had; those who exchanged birthday cards, met for lunch, sat on the front porch on a summer night. Now, though, our "friends" are measured by the activity in our social media sites.

How many followers are enough to make you popular? If you have more social media traffic, are you inclined to make more frequent posts? Are thousands of online friends better than a few true friends? Is social media an effective way for you to keep in touch with close friends?

A recent Writer's Digest article posted counts for notable pageviews for writers trying to prove they have a decent following for their work.



Notable numbers are high, starting with:

20,000/month for blogs
5,000 followers for Twitter and for your own email newsletter.

By those standards, most of us are lurkers - reading just the blogs and Facebook/Twitter feeds we can scan in a few minutes.

It's summer, and we know where our real friends are - out on the porch, waiting for us.