Networked out?

Regular readers will know I'm having my first taste of social networking.  Fiona recently invited me to join Facebook. That made me think I should do something with my Linked In profile. Then I started contemplating getting my mates from Friends Reunited to join Facebook so I don't have to keep hopping across.  Then someone said 'I'm on MySpace. You need to join that next.'

Now, both Ragan and Melcrum are launching networking sites for internal communicators. Which I think is a fantastic idea. I'm a confirmed Melcrum fan, so I'll be joining theirs as soon as it's launched, but in the meantime I've joined Ragan's to have a look.

What do I think of it all so far? Facebook unnerved me. I'm quite a private person and I'm wary of how much people really know about me. I'm also wary that other people might not want me to know what they're doing. And it's not how most of my friends communicate, so it's an uphill job to get them to join. So all in all, I haven't sent that many invitations.

Linked In is nice and easy and very good for pure business contact-making, although I'm not sure what I'd do with it beyond that. It looks as though Melcrum and Ragan might be going a step further and adding resources and content. I'll wait and see.

Overall, I'm feeling a bit networked out. As with any channel, the key question is 'what's the purpose?' It's tempting to sign up to everything just because everyone else is and make as many contacts as you can, and suddenly you've got 6 networking sites to look after ... and what are you going to use them for? I can understand why some people's profiles are way out of date.

I know that when whole networks of people are signed up (university years, sports clubs) Facebook and MySpace get used to organise events, parties etc. which makes sense. And if I can drag old friends from all over the place onto Facebook so we can all talk to each other, I probably will. Otherwise, I'm going to wait and see what the two comms network sites are like, and then a few weeks down the track I'm going to do some pruning. I'll come off one or two of them and be clear with myself about how I'm going to use the rest.

And then, hopefully, once it's not new to me anymore and the initial excitement and 'what the heck do I do with  it?' has worn off, I can stop spending far too long staring at my computer screen.

Sue

PS Calling the latest black belt lot. Oi! Didn't you have a task to comment on this blog? I don't remember seeing you lost for words at Cranfield!

Comments

[Alex M]

I know what you mean, Sue. Having succumbed to Facebook this weekend, testing the Melcrum site and reading more and more about LinkedIn, my social network involvement has gone from zero to three sites (well, 2.5 - I haven't joined LinkedIn yet) in a week. It's been a generally positive experience so far, although I was a little bit unnerved about it all at first.

Shel Holtz also has a good post on the topic of lots of social networks.

As Lee Smith said - "see you in the virtual corridors of power." ;-)

[Timm]

I'm a fan of the principle behind social networking sites; however, this whole "scene" is suffering from a clear lack of standardization. If I want to keep track of all of my friends, I will need to sign up to to LinkedIn, XING, Facebook, MySpace, and a dozen of photography pages - each with their own features. Oh, and then I need to keep my profile up to date on each of those pages.

[Alex M]

A similar thing is happening with blogs, Timm. Increasingly, you can't comment on a blog unless you're signed in to it, using vortex or wordpress or whatever. All the different blog platforms have different log in details. Seems a bit backwards to me. Spam seems to be the main culprit in that situation there though.

[Jeroen]

I'm sure networking sites can at times be useful, but people may have too high expectations. It's not because you add your profile to LinkedIn that your Real (not Second) Life network will spontaneously expand as well. But everybody does it because it's kind of cool to show off your vast virtual network, isn't it? Mine is bigger than yours! Sometimes people even make a contest out of it *coughsueandliamcough*.

It's exactly the same as creating blogs and MySpace pages: as long as you don't have any really useful or interesting content to offer, who really cares?

[Sue]

@ Jeroen - I promise I'm not in competition! In fact given that there's a Black Belt network on Linked In now and we'll no doubt have one on the melcrum site, I'm not inviting any more Black Belters onto my linked in network unless we happen to stay in touch either personally or through work after the course. But I've been able to make contact with people/suppliers I'd lost touch with through other people's networks, and at a basic level I know that if laptop disaster strikes again and I manage to lose my entire contacts list (happened earlier this year - disaster!), at least they'll survive this way!

Facebook I'm less convinced of and may get bored of some time very soon, mainly because most of my friends aren't on it so there's not much point. Interestingly though the whole thing has started me on a big hunt to track down people I've lost touch with and wish I hadn't. So far I'm meeting up with 5 people I'm really looking forward to seeing again, but it's proving a real mammoth job to find people and I guess it would have been a lot less mammoth if I could just look them up through a network.

[Jeroen]

@Sue: OK, OK, you're off the hook. It's just Liam trying to catch up then :-)

[Robin Crumby]

Sue,

My view on this (and I am hugely biased) is that social networks need to be more than just social if they are going to work for business.

IT departments the world over are waiting for any excuse to block access to a site they consider blatant procrastination and of no-value to business.

To survive past the initial wave of 'hey this is kinda cool' and become a site you return to every day/week, networks have to provide more than just networking, they need to provide solutions and answers, in my opinion.

When we started researching The Communicators' Network, we agreed that the site also needed to provide the tools to facilitate collaboration and information-sharing between communicators, over and above just discussion forums and groups.

We wanted communicators to be able to list useful resources in a central directory and allow other communicators to rate and review them. That way, we could pool knowledge and save oodles of time in searching the internet for tools, templates, ideas, blogs etc that could help.

We think we have come up with something that is not only unique (for communications) but is also open access and free to all, so fingers crossed, it will become not just 'nice to have' but indispensable.

Time will tell.

Robin Crumby.

[Sharon Wallace]

I recently read an article in the Times that Blogging reached its peak in October 2006 with statistics now showing a downward turn.

The next craze is Twittering - short messages. Feeds are available either via a website or via mobile phones, and users can also post updates via their phones.

Apparently, MP Alan Johnson is using the microblogging tool in his campaign to be Labour deputy leader. On his website twitter.com/johnson4deputy, the latest entry states - "Heading off to Leeds after a really successful campaign launch. 65 PLP supporters already declared".

Alan is quite clever to embrace the Twitter craze as the entries so far shows he is an ordinary guy and most importantly he is reaching a wider mobile phone audience!

Twitter's growth is also now being compared to that of blogging - and reportedly is growing a lot faster, especially since SXSW, an interactive film and music festival held in Austin Texas, two months ago, which is when Twitter is said to have taken off.

[Sue]

Ah yes, twittering. There was talk of that over on the Melcrum blog recently. Just when I think I'm getting my head around all things social media I'm reminded that there are a good few things I haven't tried yet.

I feel better when I'm reminded that I'm not alone. Just had a note from someone saying she's joined my Facebook friends and now has to buy a digital camera for the first time to take the photo. And did anyone read the piece in the Metro this morning about the high court judge in a trial about web crime that didn't know what the internet was? Apparently they had to get an expert in to explain it to him, with the aid of a power point presentation! Frightening.

[Alex M]

Didn't know what the internet was?! That's crazy. Surely someone in that position should at least have some grasp of the world around them? I'm amazed.

Re: Facebook and Twitter, having played with the status update on the former I sort of see what the latter is getting at, but working from home and a good 9 hours in timezones from people, there's either very little change in my "status" and/or nobody around to read it anyway.. sob sob...

[Alex M]

Here's a link the article on the not-so-down-with-it Judge Openshaw: Times Online.

[Sue]

Thanks Alex. How do you post links into a comment? Can anyone who posts a comment do it, or do you need to have a type pad account? (although I've got one and I still can't seem to manage it!)

[Alex M]

To add links in comments so they don't appear as URLs requires a little bit of html code, or you can change it so that any URLs are automatically made hotlinks as opposed to needing to copy and paste them in to your browser. It's not an ideal situation I must say. it would be great if you could just add a link in a comment the same way you would for a regular post.

[Les Potter]

Facebook and MySpace -- two entities that fascinate and unnerve me at the same time. I am on Facebook at Towson University (in the state of Maryland in the USA where I teach) but I must say I feel odd about it. I keep my Facebook stuff really simple and non-controversial. I am a 59-year-old granddfather, a professor of Mass Comm/PR and a consultant, not exactly the profile of one who is hip to social media. But some of my most beloved Mass Comm/PR students put me up to it. Now I am regularly asked to be "Facebook friends" with all sorts of folk.

MySpace is another matter. I have poked around in friends' sites, and it is a cool way to connect with people or promote something. But for me, I do not see it. I have a website and a blog and I am on Facebook (sort of). For this geezer, it feels like I am way radical enough in this social media thing. I even have a cell phone that shoots pictures now.

So, why do I do it? I am jumping into the social media revolution to learn and grow and become competent enough to teach it as part of my work to prepare students for real world communication/PR jobs. I figure I have no credibility to even discuss it if I am not actively embracing it and participating in it. Sort of a "walk the talk" kind of thing.

I love your blog. Thanks for letting me join in.
Les Potter, Vienna, Virginia

[Sue]

Hi Les,

It's really good to hear from you and I totally agree with the sentiment in your last para. I am trying not to turn into a social media bore (I certainly get bored if that's all communicators around me talk about), but I need to understand this stuff properly myself if I'm going to have credible and worthwhile opinions about it.

I have just seen from your blog that you have also mastered Twitter and even got past the 'someone tell me what the point of this is?' stage - very impressive!

http://lespotter001.wordpress.com/

Sue

[Wendy Rees]

Crumbs what a lot of technology and I work in IT! I agree with the comment Sue made - what is the purpose of the technology we could use. In the end the social media which is no more than a way to put people in touch will serve its purpose to connect people and then the "old" fashioned phone often kicks in.
I for one only use LinkedIn for business contacts to ensure I dont loose the network I have built up and often I have used it to help friends find new jobs. Now that's a pracital use the technology has helped with.

We are getting more and more into RSS feeds and being selective using technorati to get the info from the mass that is out there into our brains a bit faster.
Any tips from anyone on how to do this more would be superb.