Thing 6 - connecting with your world

Everyday we make connections.  Each connection we make serves different purposes and affect us in different ways. Some are fleeting while some have a lasting effect.  But whether these connections are deep and meaningful or not, they are important to us.

This is a post for Thing 6  not a philosophical discussion... blah!

I'll be honest and say up until this course I only dabbled in online networks. The concept was fine but it wasn't really something I craved.  I kept in touch with people by email and instant messaging and on a professional level, well, I connected with people in other ways.  There were conferences, training courses and online bulletins.  I didn't need online networks (and I certainly didn't have the time for them).

Even though I didn't use them I did know about them.  I jumped on the LinkedIn bandwagon at the beginning but I never kept it up to date and I couldn't be bothered finding connections so I turfed it... guess I should have kept it! Ah well.

It was only with the Bebo / Facebook  (FB) craze that I started to see the merit of online networks.  But again, it was on a more personal level rather than a professional level.  FB was a way of quickly and easily (and cheaply - no expensive long-distance calls) reconnect with lost friends and acquaintances; share photos, holiday stories and status updates.  I still see FB as a personal tool (I don't use Bebo anymore).  It's so much useful than traditional communication tools and is easy to pass on information to lots of people at the same time.

I know, I know... you can use it for business purposes.  My organisation does use it to relate to external contacts and supporters.  But in my role specifically, nuh uhn.  I'm okay with that though.  I don't like to mix up my personal with my professional.

Then there's Twitter.  I avoided and avoided until I had to set up an account for this course.  I'd ask myself 'what's the point of Twitter? ... How can you actually get anything across? You have no characters!'  While I still have problems with Twitter,  the more I use it the more I sort of enjoy it.  I keep it strictly business and I've actually picked up a lot of useful information.  Who knew you could get so much across with 140 characters!

LinkedIn is now my most used networking tool since starting the course.  I know, I know, I just said that I turfed my account... but I set up a new one the other week.  It's been a great new direction for me, particularly with the Information Officers' Support Group.  We tried Yahoo Groups, we tried a blog (or two) but nothing seemed to connect us.  I'm hoping that LinkedIn will be the thing that keeps us together.

So that's what I use. I connect online but I'll be honest and say I prefer to connect face-to-face.  I like to see emotions, body language and non-visual cues.

I saw an interesting article in the Independent the other day about social networks. Seems quite apt for this posting.  Happy reading.  Science of the social network (01/08/2011)