It’s a genuine question. No rhetoric here.
I am working on a contribution to a white paper being prepared by Hotwire PR via Drew Benvie — my particular chapter is ‘Who Uses (online) Social Networks, and How?’
I have a feeling that my first stab at the answer — ‘lots of people in all sorts of ways’ — won’t stretch to 1000 words, so any contributions, quotes, introductions to eminent scholars and links are very welcome. By next Tuesday. I’m also considering its economic importance to UK, plc.
I suspect that my original answer is probably right, considering there are networks for old people, babies, dogs, zombies and pretty much everyone in between. However, some uses are likely to be more common than others. For the purposes of this article, I’ll define online social networks as web sites that allow users to create personal (and often personalised) profiles on their own pages within the site and also to communicate with and befriend other members, thus articulating and visualising their social networks.
Economic importance is tricky, too. Most stories from official sources are along the lines of “£10bn a day lost productivity due to Facebook”. On the other hand, how much money has been saved on things like research time, recruitment fees, knowledge-sharing, advertising and general strengthening of loose ties which one day lead to money changing hands?
Anyway, over to you. You can reply via email, if it’s a secret.
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Hi Ian. Very interesting, would be great to see report when it is done. Let us all know!
One thing I find, for myself and not surprisingly others in similar lines of work, is that social networks serve as a useful alternative to in-person networking.
I’m an independent consulting in the training/learning realm. In the past, many of my professional contacts had their origins in face-to-face situations, such as workshops, seminars, meetings of professional organizations.
The local-chapter-monthly-meeting model seems to be breaking down (I say this after a stint as president of a local chapter), and for me to attend the annual shindig of the society I value most highly would set me back at least $2,500 — which is a lot of value to justify.
I have made many longstanding professional contacts through a listserv I used to participate in; more recently I’ve done the same through blogging and in particular through commenting on the blogs of others. In the past month, I’ve joined Facebook (invited by one of those blogger acquaintances). I see it as one more potential channel (there are no guarantees).