Social network-based relationships are not shallow – they are stronger
Many people my age dismiss social networks and the friendships people have on those networks as a waste of time and shallow. I think that they totally missing the point – and creating another class of ludites that will be laughed at in a few decades.
Let’s take three common scenarios and analyze whether those relationships are indeed shallow or not.
If my 13 year old son has friends on Facebook or some other social network, and he uses those networks to continue interacting with his friends after school, or when then move on to high school – are those shallow relationships? Of course not, it enables him to extend his interactions with class mates beyond school hours, stay in touch with people who change school, or extend his relationship with weekend-only friends or summer camp friends to everyday relationships. It makes his relationships stronger – not weaker or more shallow than the friendships I grew up with.
Now let’s look at people who I know professionally and befriend of Facebook. I get to know people from a totally different angle than I would have ever gotten to know them from our professional interactions. Through social networks I will get a better sense of their hobbies, their music taste, their reading preferences, or even their family struggles – strengthening that relationship beyond the weak ties that professional relationships typically lead to.
Ok, so how about those people you accept as friends on Facebook or Myspace that you do not really know. In my case I am a blogger and I have an audience. Whenever someone befriends me on Facebook and we have more than 10 friends in common I will friend them back. I look at it as an audience – and through social networking I actually strengthen the relationship I have with my audience. The same can be said for bands on Myspace – they can create relationships with their fans that is much stronger than we ever had with the bands we liked.
Now I will not befriend someone who I do not know on LinkedIn. Why? Because on LinkedIn the reciprocity that makes that network work is based on social capital I have with others instead of just myself. For LinkedIn to work I need to try to get you some time with someone else I know, not just give you my time as is the case with Facebook and some other networks.
So all in all I think that a majority of online social networkers benefit from stronger relationships with people they interact with online, not weaker or shallower relationships. Social networking adds a dimension to most relationships that was previously not there.
Sure, there are outliers out there who do not benefit from stronger relationships by being online – and a ton of them who are wasting their time and your time – but those are outliers. They actually exist in the physicall world as well.
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November 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Interesting that you use LI like that. I’ve found it to be the most ‘permiscuous’ primarily because it attempts to create scarcity. Xing which is most open has equally less pressure to connect. Most fellow professionals in the UK are not on LI (or Xing) BTW, and if they are, they have long forgotten their password!
I find Facebook pretty coy, and being a very (late) adopter immediately adjusted my habits on other networks to match the coyness. I also immediately decided not to feed Twitter into FB as Twitter seems to run with a more immediate time line. Facebook has a ‘weekly’ timeline or something like that. FB is so coy most employees don’t indicate where they work!
On shallow or deep, I see the social networks just as an extension of networking into the virtual world. Just as the telephone once meant I didn’t have to walk to my neighbour’s house, now I communicate more readily over longer distances. Today I had a long rambling phonecall to someone at the other end of the earth – not possible even three years ago. Quicker, easier, further – but not displacing any normal human goals! It’s made a huge difference to settling in the UK and as I had moved countries and towns twice in the previous 5 years, I have something of a benchmark.
Too long for a comment, I am sorry!
November 26th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Not too long at all – thank you for taking the time to make the comment. It is interesting to hear that adoption in the UK is fairly different from the US. It is also interesting to hear you describe yourself as a late adopter even though you are on FB and seem to be using some sort of VoIP service
November 26th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Sure, I like my friends on these social networks as well. But CMO’s do not see the ROI on Social Networks such as Facebook and MySpace despite the cultural phenomenon that these space have enjoyed in the past few years.
According to a survey by Epsilon, 55% of top-brand CMO’s said they’re not interested in incorporating these and similar social-networking sites into their marketing strategies. Overall, strategic use of social-networking platforms remains low, even among those who say they have interest in them. Only 10% of CMO survey respondents said they are using social sites for their marketing plans.
It seems to me that this all points to a reliance on traditional media and an ever important emphasis on demonstrating results. There’s value in finding out where your consumers are and communicating with them in a manner that they respond to but I’ve often felt that these social-networking sites narrowly appeal to young adults and provide significant challenges as far as measuring results and yielding actionable data.
The common attitude is let’s build Facebook Page, post a video on YouTube, get into Twitter. But it’s the same old one-way mentality of broadcasting to, not with. There’s not enough time spent spectating and participating with these networks to understand that it’s about commenting, being open to differing opinions, responding and – most importantly – making changes based on the feedback and conversation that is taking place.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Steve — thanks for taking the time to comment. I agree that CMO’s have an increasing emphasis on demonstrating results. The thing that I do not get is that it is way easier to measure results with social media based marketing programs than it is with traditional marketing programs.
I also agree with you that too many marketers are using social media as another broadcasting channel. Thankfully those that do that fail fast. Unfortunately they are giving all marketers a bad rep again.
The Epsilon study – should we be surprised? It is still an innovator/early adopter market and we know that there are not too many of those in marketing departments. All that being said, and considering the average tenure of CMO’s, it is surprising that not more of them are jumping for the lifeline that social media marketing provides them in tough economic times.