In Web 2.0 jargon the words “friend” and “community” are severely abused. Unless a brand has a cult following, there’s no “community” around the brand, just customers and prospects. And unless you can call on your friends in a time of need, and they you, they’re not friends, they’re faces with bios and semi-frequent updates. Maybe you see them in person once in a while, maybe you don’t. It’s a dark, cynical world where we allow things as near and dear to us as friends and community to become less than they are. What starts as a semantic trick quickly becomes the new paradigm. Ultimately, I think we have a responsibility as professional communicators to speak honestly and think critically. It’s easy to slip and let things like “engagement with the community” get in the way of what’s truly at work. Let’s call things by name and name things correctly. Customers are customers, friends are friends, and community is the place where you live.