How to make friends and be an influencer

Can an app fix the "friendship recession"?

Lesley McClurg, Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR.org, Culture, July 25, 2026, 4-minute listen

How to make friends and be an influencer

How to be an influencer? Get homeschooled by industry parents, sing for brother, get fame.

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I have no idea why people follow me

Amidst what some researchers call a "friendship recession," apps and services have been proliferating to connect Americans. We hear from people who have already tried them or use them regularly to reflect on what about them has worked and hasn't.

TRANSCRIPT

HOST SCOTT SIMON: Many of the old places where friendships formed -- the office, houses of worship, maybe the VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars, a.k.a. degenerate bars] -- may have become less central to people's lives.

Just react to things with opinions!

It's part of what's been called a friendship recession: Americans spending dramatically less time with friends than they did a decade ago. As Leslie McClurg of member station KQED FM [San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento] reports, a growing number of apps and services are trying to bring people back together.

BYLINE LESLIE MCCLURG: When Jen Hobbs moved to Oakland last summer, she assumed friends would come naturally at the coffee shop or after an exercise class, but six months in...

JEN HOBBS: And on New Year's, I was kind of reflecting on things, and I realized I still don't have any friends.

Talk about fitness on TikTok with a hot bod!

MCCLURG: She made it her resolution to fix that and downloaded every friendship app that she had seen advertised on Instagram. Some are simple, like "Bumble For Friends" (BFF: Bumble For Friends), which works much like the company's dating app.

But instead of swiping for lovers, you're swiping for pals. Others, like Timeleft [or Friend Cult], go further by matching users with like-minded strangers for a meal. [SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING]

UNIDENTIFIED COMMENTATOR: In restaurants across the country [LAUGHTER] total strangers are gathering for conversation and community over shared meals. More

• We’re not a social club, we’re a Friend Cult™ -- a weekly, Oakland-based gathering that makes it easier to see friends. No more text tag, no more calendar Tetris, no more doomscrolling. Just show up and hang out — like it used to be. See friends. Eat food. Feel better. Die happy.

Mr. Beast, what's an "influencer"?

Mr. Beast is the biggest influencer

An "influencer" has the ability to alter the attitudes, shopping behavior, or shopping decisions of others through knowledge, position, authority, or the because of an audience relationship.

This ability is either inherent to one's personality or is completely constructed by others for some benefit: social, personal, or economical [1].

The term "influencer" is used in media, business, religion, politics, and communication, referring to folks like social media influencers, podcasters, public speakers, religious influencers, writers, and newsletter writers who have dedicated followings [2, 3].

One writer defines influencers as those "who exercise influence over the organization and its potential customers" [4]. Another defines them as someone "who significantly shapes the customer's purchasing decision" [5]. According to another writer, influencers are "well-connected, create an impact, have active minds, and are trendsetters" [6].

What does every American want?

Just because someone has many followers does not necessarily mean that person has much influence over them [7, 8].

In contemporary usage, it means a social media influencer [9, 10, 11] or an online influencer [12, 13, 14] who builds a grassroots online presence through engaging content such as photos, videos, and updates.

This is done by using direct audience interaction to establish authenticity, expertise, and appeal by standing apart from traditional celebrities by growing a platform through social media rather than pre-existing fame [15, 16].

The modern term is commonly a paid role in which a business entity pays for social media influence-for-hire activity to promote products and services, known as influencer marketing [17].

As such, an influencer effectively acts as a modern salesperson or a marketer.  A 1% increase in spending on influencer marketing can lead to a 0.5% increase in audience engagement [18] for a company or corporation.

Types include fashion influencer, travel influencer, virtual influencer, content creators [19, 20, 21], and streamers [22, 23, 24]. More

How to Win Friends and Influence People

How to be an influencer? Keep talking until someone breaks your jaw like Jake? Read a book?

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This classic self-help book written by Dale Carnegie came out in 1936. Worldwide, over 30 million copies have been sold since, making it one of the best-selling books of all time [1, 2].

Dale Carnegie had been conducting business courses in New York since 1912 [3]. In 1934, Leon Shimkin (Simon & Schuster) took one of Carnegie's 14-week courses on human relations and public speaking. He later persuaded Carnegie to let a stenographer take notes from the course to be revised for publication [3].

The initial 5,000 copies of the book sold exceptionally well, going through 17 editions in the first year [3]. In 1981, a revised edition containing updated language and anecdotes was released [4]. The revised edition reduced the number of sections from six to four, eliminating sections on effective business letters and improving marital satisfaction. In 2011, it was Number 19 on Time's List of the 100 Most Influential Nonfiction Books [5]. In 2022, a newly revised edition was published.

Author Dale Carnegie

I know what people want (Carnegie)

Before How to Win Friends and Influence People, the self-help genre had other successes. Authors like Orison Swett Marden and Samuel Smiles had sold well with their self-help titles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Dale Carnegie began his career teaching night classes at a NY YMCA, later expanding to YMCAs in Philadelphia and Baltimore [6]. He then taught independently at hotels in London, Paris, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, writing small booklets to go along with his courses [7].

When evolution gets us

After one of his 14-week courses, publisher Leon Shimkin of Simon & Schuster approached him [8]. Shimkin urged Carnegie to write a book, but he was not initially persuaded. Shimkin then hired a stenographer to type up one of Carnegie's long lectures and presented that transcript to Carnegie [9], who edited and revised it into its final form [10].

To market the book, Shimkin sent 500 copies to former graduates of the Dale Carnegie Course, with a note that pointed out the utility of the book for refreshing students with the advice they had learned [11]: 141.

Or just work out until you have a hot bod. See?

The 500 mailed copies brought orders for over 5,000 more copies, so Simon & Schuster had to quickly increase the original print order of 1,200 [11]: 142.  Shimkin also ran a full-page ad in the New York Times complete with quotes by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller on the importance of human relations [12].

Originally published in Nov. 1936, the book reached the New York Times best-seller list by the end of the year and stayed on it for the next two years [11]: 141.

Simon & Schuster continued to advertise the book, relying heavily on testimonials as well as the testable approach the book offered [12]. More

• BONEM (BONËM) "One More Time"; Can an app fix the ‘friendship recession’?; Dale Carnegie's classic book; Crystal Q, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly