RTR and the art of “friending” on dailymile

As many of you know, Caleb, Daniel and I met through the outrageously popular social training log, dailymile.com. Yes, we met online and no, we’re not creepy (watch the episode and you’ll know what I’m talking about). The friending process can be an intimidating thing on a new social network but the three of us went out there on our own, taking one for the team in order to bring you the best of the best of the best (ok, everyone is pretty cool on dailymile-you really can’t go wrong).

In this episode we talk with our guest host, Mike Moffo, about the science behind building your group of dailymile friends. Everyone has a different strategy: some people go all out, some are conservative, there are the shy folks, the outgoing folks, and the enthusiastic diehards. We’ve discovered a few things, the rate of friend acceptance on dailymile is phenomenally high, the majority of your new friends are incredibly responsive, and everyone is all about sharing the motivation, and feel good vibe.

All that aside, we’re still going to throw out some pointers on how to “friend” at dailymile.com.

1. Be out going. Putting yourself out there means that you’re going to get a lot of feedback and motivation from the community. Add people as a friend even though you don’t know them in real life, chances are they’re awesome cause they’re on dailymile!
2. Look for people with a similar goal as your’s. Dailymile is all about the encouragement. If you are a runner and you’re only friends with cyclists, chances are you’re not going to feel very motivated.
3. Post things other than a workout. People look for motivation in many forms, not just from posting workouts. Encouragement comes in the form of notes, images, videos, high fives, poems, quotes, etc. When you post cool stuff, cool people “friend” you.
4. Add the RunTalkRadio crew. We’re just all around awesome. You can find us here: Meet the cast

Are you looking for friends on dailymile? Just to get you started, here are a few that RunTalkRadio recommends:

• Michelle
• Todd G.
• Steve
• Chaz
• Suzanne
• Todd S.

2 Responses to “RTR and the art of “friending” on dailymile”

1. chazzerguy says:

   January 20, 2010 at 9:02 am

   I’ll friend just about anyone… And periodically I’ll go back and prune away the folks who haven’t posted in a couple of months… However, there are a small select handful of DM’ers whom I follow via RSS… That’s a very very nice feature of the site that can really allow users to closely follow the training of specific folks without all the other “noise.”
2. simpsoka says:

   January 20, 2010 at 9:44 am

   @Chazz That’s a great option that we didn’t discuss in the episode. I find my self filtering to bring down the “noise” as well. Thanks for bringing it up!