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Wil Schroter, CEO of Go Big Network, writes of the value of "friend"-making being equal to, if not greater, than fundraising or business planning. And it's true. In Silicon Valley, like it or not, the entrepreneur with the most "friends" wins. (Even when they lose.) Business plans rarely matter; truly compelling ideas get overlooked. There is plenty of funding to go around. But "friends"? They matter. Schroter's wrong, however, when he says there is no cost to making "friends."

1. It is a huge time sink. It's demanding to maintain constant communication via email, IM, twitter, blog, lunches, events, dinners. "Did I get the tab last time?", "Is this the right outfit to befriend the right people at the party tonight?" Your entire life, everything that defines you must be replicated in social network after social network. And it's an endless, vicious cycle. A new tool, a new network tries to improve on existing methods of "friending": you must adopt it, re-enter info, invite "friends", confirm "friends," maintain your profile, send messages, and so on. You have to maintain existing friends (not always easy when they are shallow and business-motivated). Your competitors are all "friends" with your "friends" so you need to find the new, hot "friends" who won't be "friends" with your "friends."

2. When everyone's your friend, life is boring. People are afraid shallow friendships will be broken by criticism, disagreement, revealing of private tales. (And they're right.) So everyone promotes, praises, keeps secrets, congratulates — when you're "friends." Any critique, after all, is still publicity. Everyone talks about the same subjects, the same gossip, has the same pseudo-debates at the same meetups, parties, conferences. Life becomes bland.

3. It makes you paranoid. Are they really my "friend"? Do they really support my company? Will I piss my "friend" off if I say that? I'd like to be "friends" with x but if I introduce myself by trashing y, what if x and y are good "friends"?

4. It makes for crappy businesses (and makes good businesses "evil."). Doesn't everyone hate the crappy business which has no strategy, is an also-ran, or has a lame product but is well-endowed in the "friend" category? Even good businesses are problematic. They naturally attract the most "friends" — who doesn't get "friendly" around lots of money? These companies just add to the echo chamber of hype, buzz, spin, coverage, funding, recruiting, power, and blogging, creating a vacuum for the rest of the market.

5. And finally, an observation we almost don't need to make: These "friends" are not really your friends.

And in the spirit of today's hip hop inspiration, I leave you with classic, old school ... Whodini!

Friends. How many of us have them? Friends. Ones we can depend on... Friends. How many of us have them? Friends... Is a word we use everyday. Most the time we use it in the wrong way. Now you can look the word up, again and again, But the dictionary doesn't know the meaning of friends...