This is another post inspired by one that I have previously posted on the company intranet, but which has much wider implications. That one was entitled World 2.0 – the change this time is to reflect the fact that my own thinking has moved on since then. The new forms of interaction available to us in this day and age require that we rethink the way in which we can relate to others.
It used to be that the only people you had the chance to get to know were those who happened to live their lives within a short distance of where you were born – indeed often the only reason for travelling further was to fight (and often therefore kill) those you met in “far off lands”. (like the next village😀)
The ability to wander further afield is a relatively recent thing and the ability to communicate reasonably easily with people anywhere in the world is even more recent. This changes our lives in a whole host of ways – not least the fact that you are no longer so restricted in who comprises your circle of friends.
Most of my previous posts in this blog are actually related to this phenomenon in one way or another. It is something that interests me both personally and professionally. In my work, I require to understand the way in which people interact and the way in which information is transferred from one to another.
The way business is carried out has not really been impacted too much by the arrival of the so-called web 2.0 applications, but I think that is more because business practice is lagging behind “the possible” and still largely sticking to what is considered “best practice”. This, I suspect means that many important opportunities are being missed.
This post is entitled “part 1” because I want to separate my view of the changes that already happened in communication from what will be the subject of “part 2” – some ideas about how businesses (and perhaps individuals) could benefit from these changes.
It is important to understand that the provision of web 2.0 tools has enabled everyone with web access to interact with each other on a completely new level. Geographical limitations have been largely removed – although the time zone differences still mean that not all interaction happens as speedily as it might.
There are a lot of tools now available and it is not my intention to cover them all, however, I think it is worth making a few points using examples. We will start with that community that people seem to either love or hate – the one that inhabits Facebook. Those who dislike Facebook have a host of good reasons for doing so and, for most of them, I would not argue that they are things that are undoubtedly ‘limitations’ of the Facebook model.
However, I prefer to see the opportunities.
It is easy to criticise much of the content of Facebook but perhaps it just reflects what the real world is like and we are simply seeing a side of some of our ‘friends’ that we don’t normally witness. There are certainly plenty of things that I read on Facebook that I could have done without knowing – and it still puzzles me why some of the things that I have read were ever published there. Certainly it proves that not everyone has the same way of dealing with the world that I have.
For many people it seems that Facebook is the primary way of broadcasting every piece of trivia about their lives – I personally prefer to be VERY selective about what I make available – and that is something that the critics of Facebook often overlook. It is up to the individual who they become friends with and what they then tell those friends – and apart from the very public wall posts there is private messaging as well as chat that can be used for more directed messages.
Certainly I will more often send someone a message, or chat to them online, rather than broadcast something via their wall (have been caught out once or twice already with less than careful use of words on wall posts which – of course – are often without context).
Those who dismiss Facebook tend also to dismiss many other forms of online communication. Given that this is becoming increasingly the ‘norm’ for many people this could lead to them becoming a bit isolated from the crowd.
Anyone who has read my other posts (apart from deserving a medal) will realise that the Facebook “one big lump of friends” model does not really fit with my own mental model of how my friendships are organised. In particular, there is much that I would not share with everyone, but might share with my closest – my ‘nearest and dearest’! There is also the issue of people existing in different friendship ‘groups’. I have work friends; I have family; I have church friends; I have sports friends; I have musician friends; I have friends from long ago; I have friends that I only know online; and so on. These groups often have little reason to interact with each other, although there are inevitably some friends who straddle more than one of the groups.
One way to solve this is to use different media – so, for instance I use LinkedIn primarily for my ‘professional’ friends – those I know through my work or through the professional societies. There are some of those who are also friends on Facebook, but the majority are two separate groups.
I think that people generally are using these sort of ways to “keep in touch”. I don’t think it makes a satisfactory replacement for actually meeting people, but in many instances it is very much better than nothing.
There are a significant number of people that I know and respect within my ‘profession’ that I will rarely if ever get to meet with. Yes, an occasional dinner at a conference is great, but in order to keep in touch there needs to be some mechanism to close the miles and, of course the www provides that through email, webinars, online conferences, messaging and all the social media that we are talking about here.
I remember when I was doing some research about ten years ago I found it tremendously exciting/helpful/surprising that I could take part in a ‘conversation’ with someone using email and that person was in Australia or Canada. We were able to ping emails back and forward and get constructive criticism of ideas almost instantaneously from people on the other side of the world. It was instances like that which convinced me that it is important to try and harness the resources of the www to further your knowledge – as well as keeping in touch with great friends that you have never even met…..
In part 2 of this I intend to progress this note to look at a more refined view of social networking. I don’t think that there is yet any tool that will address all of the issues.