(this post was actually scheduled to run Tuesday, 31 July 07. I decided to run it today as it works well in the "Media Free? That's easy...and scary. Know why?" thread) NextStage spent a nice chunk of time exploring social phenomena on the net and I've written a few papers on the subject. It was only long after we completed the research that I decided to become active in social networks, though.
The funny thing is that online social networks existed long before we called them such. Any online community that you belonged to and especially communities that migrated from offline to on or were offline and added an online component are social networks.
Does your house of worship send you an email bulletin? Congratulations, you're in a social network.
Does your bakerei or bucherei send you an email, txt or cell notification when things are ready? Congratulations, you're in a social network.
I'm not talking about travel centers and department stores where you opted in to some mailing list, I'm referencing something where a previous physical contact already existed and it was extended to an online presence. These are your butchers, your bakers and candlestick makers, people you would recognize if you saw them walking down the street and not because they have their picture in Facebook or IMedia.
Thus I had a good laugh when a friend started emailing me through one of these social sites and mentioned that another mutual friend was going to create special email accounts for us so we could join a "group" on this social site.
I wrote "It might be easier (for me, anyways) if we just used good old fashioned email for now rather than [[the social site's internal email capability]]. I did see your email there. Yet another email address? [[social site]] specific? Oy."
My friend responded, "yeah, sometimes I have to wonder if we'll reach a time when all we do is interact on social networks and not actually get any work done!"
And I laughed.
PS) did anybody besides me get a chuckle out of my "good old fashioned email" reference?
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- Email Bankruptcy blog posts
- The Eventing Yourself Blog arc
- Going Off the Grid
- In this arc:
- MediaFreeZones
- Proof I'm a Luddite
- Unplugging... why is it so hard?
- Voluntary Simplification blog posts
- IMedia Brand Summit on 9-12 Sept 07
- XChange on 20-21 Sept 07
- DC Emetrics Summit on 14-17 Oct '07
- Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston.
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