Social Networking – We’re Transparent Now
These social networks are cool. They allow you to stay in touch with current friends and relatives, find new friends online, and re-connect with old friends from the past. I’ve done all three and can say that without a doubt it’s been a fabulous experience. Social networking can also be a very productive and effective business tool – if used correctly. I have developed new customers with Twitter, FaceBook, and MySpace.
All in all I’m a huge fan of social networks and I would recommend everyone get involved at least on a personal level – if you are in sales or if you own your own company you will most certainly want to explore the possibilities for you and your company from a business perspective.
Having said all of that – having heaped praises upon social media – there are a couple of wrinkles and potential problems that I’d like to point out:
1) Social media makes us transparent. You can’t tell that little white lie to your buddy at work about “going out of town this weekend” and then let him see you on FaceBook posting about working in the yard all day Saturday. In a way this is great. You have to be up front with people and no longer can you fudge the truth…you get caught. In addition to this transparancy happening right now — guess what else — your grand kids are gonna be reading archives of everything you ever wrote or blogged about and every picture you ever posted. That can be a bit scary.
2) Can social media be dangerous? Well – there is the possibility of someone monitoring everything and waiting for that day you head out of town on vacation – and then they show up at your empty house for a nice little burglary. Social media makes it easier for someone to stalk another person. There are indeed potential risks.
But let’s be real. Most of us don’t have to worry about being caught in a lie, most of us don’t have to worry about the great grand kid finding a horrible mystery on FaceBook from 20 years prior, and most all of us are not posting compromising pictures all over the internet. As for safety – I would argue that some practical and reasonable measure combined with common sense should take care of those risks.
All in all the benefits of using social media far outweigh the potential downside. Go for it.
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3 Responses to “Social Networking – We’re Transparent Now”
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You’re entirely right about the social networking Dennis. I’m on Myspace, facebook, linked in, plaxo, even youtube. I just don’t “tweet”. (don’t you dare say it out loud Terri) Hell, look at me now – I’M BLOGGING for crying out loud. In my travels I come across a fair number of computer geeks and one thing I’m beginning to pick up is that the “millenials” – that generation born since the early 1980’s – you know, the ones whose thumbs can be faster than their brains sometimes? They started this whole social media thing and now the largest membership group on any of these sites is the over 40 crowd, and the millenials are not happy about it. Their parents took it over from them !!! So, get ready for somebody to invent something new for them to use to communicate with each other. If you’ve ever read the book “The Tipping Point”, I think we’re starting to live it. Like the wise old physicist used to say, the only constant is change.
This is kinda strange…my daughter and everyone I know that’s her age – late 20’s and younger – they HATE Twitter. They don’t get it. They don’t want to get it. It’s us older geeks that are really using Twitter. I use it for information – I get so much information so fast – news, ideas – they get posted on Twitter much quicker than on an internet site.
I agree, Twitter is probably the most fastest way to alert the masses about any particular product or service that I have ever come across. Twitter is a great tool if you are looking to populate your own site.