Social Networking – This is Big!

I have been interested in the Social Networking space since about 2003. In early 2004, I joined LinkedIn the first social network targeted at business professionals. I signed up created my profile and said this is really pretty cool. I sent out invites to 20-30 friends and approximately 40-50% signed up. It then sat there for several years and really didn’t do much. It reminded me of the early days of the internet when I said to a colleague “hey does your company have a website?” he responded, “yeah your company?” I replied, “Yes”… then I queried “Yours doing anything?” He replied… “No, …yours?” …. In those early days websites were not much more than electronic brochures. The parallels to the early days of social networking are striking to me.

I am speaking primarily of those of us over 30, the kids got it right away… both the web, IM, and now social networking. For those of us over 35, I think it is more challenging. Beyond being a tad overwhelmed at the 300 or so emails per day, the IM’s, the text messages, phone calls, phone messages, meetings, con calls…. we wonder when and how are we supposed to work? Well I can only tell you the one conclusion I am absolutely sure about, get used to it, they are here to stay.

Oh yes there will be winners and losers, consolidations, acquisitions, combination’s, new technologies and the like. But social networking is here to stay and it will change the way many of us choose to communicate, work, market, and yes, even socialize. This definitely falls into the category of lead, follow, or get left behind. The reason I am sure about this is that I totally ignored the beginnings of IM. In general I am against interrupt driven technologies. I see them as productivity killers. I thought this for a long time. I was wrong, dead wrong. In actuality they can be either productivity killers or enhancers depending on how used. Much like the web itself.

In the early days of the web, companies were really restrictive on who could access the internet and kept many employees from access at all. I was against these policies and was pushing for access for everyone. However after I saw how many people wasted time shopping on eBay, useless surfing, etc, I was ready to change my tune. I finally came to believe the answer is allow access but educate on expectations, policies, and do’s and don’ts. I was amazed at how many people fritter away their time with surfing nonsense.

This week I am attending the twitter conference in LA. Six months ago I was definitely in the camp of “Really? A 140 character messaging platform… we really need this??” Well, again I was dead wrong and I have come around.  Twitter has crossed the chasm and is going mainstream. I believe this for several reasons…
1) The platform is based on mobile… not the web. I think the phone will win the battle for the ubiquitous platform of the future. Don’t get me wrong pc’s are not going away anytime soon, but the phone will be the platform for information on the go. It is also the leading candidate to be the electronic wallet and payment device.
2) Most of the world does not have high speed internet (and due to infrastructure limitations likely will not have anytime soon); but they all have cell phones. There are 100’s of millions of people in China and India that leaped right over land lines to cell phones. They bypassed a 100 years of technology and went right to mobile and are therefore more reliant on it, and more accepting.
3) Growth Rates Twitter usage is growing very rapidly and looks like it could reach 1 Billion by the end of 2010 or mid 2011. That is significant.  Roughly 15% of the population… truly approaching the pulse of the planet.

Yes it is true that there is a ton of what I consider useless drivel that occurs, in fact, I would argue that useless noise is a high level of current traffic…but as the search capability grows and you can more easily find the topics that you are interested in you start to see the value. I find it interesting what many people follow, you know the old saying “One mans trash is another mans treasure.” Don’t miss this trend… thus far it is worth digging through the trash.  The value will only grow.
– John