My boss asked me several months ago to research something called “social networking.” He had been hearing a lot about it at meetings and events that he had recently attended.
Even I was seeing those two words—“social networking”—repeating themselves over and over in publications, blogs, advertisements and other places.
At that time, I didn’t consider myself completely ignorant of the social networking phenomenon. I mean, I knew it had something to do with “Twittering” or “Tweeting” and “My Space.”
Or is it “Your Space”?
Even before I was asked to do this research, an old high school friend had asked me to join Facebook.
“Many of us from the old high school class are on there,” he told me.
I replied to his e-mail, “Gee, I don’t know about Facebook. I don’t want a whole bunch of personal information out there for the world to see.”
But now, with orders from the boss to “check it out,” I began the mission to discover once and for all what this thing called “social networking” was all about.
First contact
My initial thought was that I needed a consultant to educate me on this. A professional in the field of social networking. Someone who could guide me through all of this new way of “socializing” on the Internet.
But, after a few calls to Washington, D.C., beltway social networking consultants, I quickly realized that I didn’t have a budget to be consulted. Their fees to explain to me what a “Twitter” does were socially unacceptable. I soon realized that I had to do this on my own. And then it occurred to me: I had two resident experts available who could give me all of the information I needed for free: my two teenagers.
They told me, “There’s nothing to it, Dad. Create a Facebook account and go for it.”
It appeared at that point, that once and for all, my moment of truth had come. I had to bite the bullet, create a Facebook account and dive into the sea of social networking.
Wow! Within a week I was reunited with roughly 50 old friends whom I hadn’t spoken with (or even thought about) in over 30 years. And then I found people I work with there, neighbors, American Traffic Safety Services Association (ATSSA) members, colleagues from other organizations I work with every day. I found groups of people with like interests, joined some of those groups, made more contacts and even got help when I needed it.
For example, I needed help with new video production software that we recently purchased, and through a contact (a former co-worker), I found someone locally who was willing to provide inexpensive training on this software.
In another case, I had to obtain a video clip that aired on a Chicago television station newscast. It turns out that one of my Facebook contacts, who worked for me 15 years ago, was currently working at that exact Chicago station, and he was the actual producer of the video clip I was looking for.
Amazing stuff, and not complicated at all. “This is easy,” I thought. “I am social networking.”
Soon, my Facebook contact list grew to over 100 people—some professional contacts, some personal contacts. But that’s a microscopic number of contacts compared with the pool of people who are on Facebook.
In a Jan. 5, 2009, article by iStrategyLabs, CEO Peter Corbett reported the 35- to 44-year-old demographic is the fastest growing on Facebook—with a 276.4% growth rate in a six-month period. The article also reports the 55-and-over crowd has a 194.3% growth rate, and the 25- to 34-year-old population on the website is doubling every six months.
Out of all of those people to choose from, it’s entirely your choice who you associate with—or choose not to associate with.
On location
One of my Facebook contacts is ATSSA member David Friday, vice president of sales and marketing of Waterblasting Technologies.
Friday took his social networking skills to the show floor of ATSSA’s February 2009 Annual Convention and Traffic Expo in San Jose, Calif., by creating a “Stripe Hog” profile (named after their product) on the Facebook website. Friends, customers and clients who could not attend Traffic Expo were given daily video updates of the events that they were missing.
The videos were nothing elaborate. Friday would simply point his camera at an ATSSA Innovation Award winner, for example, start the camera and ask, “Tell me about your product.” In less than a minute the description was recorded, uploaded to the Internet via laptop to the “Stripe Hog” Facebook profile and everyone “socially networked” to that profile received an instant video update. All of this was done within just a few minutes.
“The people who couldn’t make the show and saw my updates to the Stripe Hog Facebook group felt like they missed a great time and great opportunities at Traffic Expo. As a result, they tell me they’re going to make it a priority to be at the ATSSA show in 2010,” Friday said.
I recently created an ATSSA profile on Facebook and it is now among the hundreds—perhaps thousands—of groups that are created on that site every day.
And although Facebook is a remarkable social networking tool, Linkedin and other similar networking sites are just as good.
I have accumulated hundreds of contacts at Linkedin since joining that network, which has a more business-like atmosphere than Facebook. For example, if I want to find a public relations consultant or a temporary-traffic-control company within 50 miles of ATSSA, I can do so on Linkedin in seconds. Or, I can post a question in a category-specific group, where hundreds of people are connected, to receive an almost-immediate answer. By the way, an ATSSA group has been formed at Linkedin, too, similar to the one on Facebook.
ATSSA’s hope when creating a group on Facebook was to create peer-to-peer interactions and discussions on a broad variety of topics. The group has even allowed members to post photographs and videos of their products and services.
Many people are discouraged from joining social networks, usually fearing a lengthy registration process. It takes only minutes to register, and it opens a whole new world outside of e-mail, faxes and the telephone. Best of all, Facebook and Linkedin are free, so there’s no excuse not to take advantage of social networking today.
Where will social networking be five years from now? Who knows? I am sure something new and innovative will come along by then. But in the meantime, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and others continue to intrigue business owners, top executives or people just looking for a new way to communicate, network, sell or introduce a product or just reach out to a new audience.
Or maybe you just want to chat with a high school buddy you haven’t spoken to since Jimmy Carter was president. You can do that today—in just a few minutes—right from the keyboard.
