We’ve all been there. You receive a connection request on Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, or another social network from someone you met at a networking event or conference. You chatted for a few minutes, didn’t have any immediate reason to be in touch, but exchanged business cards. Now she wants to connect to you on a social network. You’re conflicted: yes, you’re contacts, but do you want to be connected?
Some people try to reconcile this dilemma by simply using different networks for different purposes, e.g. Facebook for personal contacts and LinkedIn for business contacts. While a noble attempt at making order out of chaos, multiple personality disorder is not sustainable: in the 2.0 world, we have a single persona. Eventually, your personal and professional selves will overlap so much that you will concede and become one with yourself again.
So, until recently, when you received an invitation to connect, you chose to accept or not to accept. It was fairly simple, but the lack of a common set of objective “relationship” definitions made many of us queasy. So, most social networks added shades of gray: they provide us with the opportunity to define our relationships. For example, on Plaxo, you can be “business contacts,” “family” or “friends.” LinkedIn and Facebook offer even more relationship choices. This added dimension is a bit of a relief, but actually has created a more complex challenge: the Social Networkers’ Dilemma.
Let’s take the situation in which someone you met though work invites you as a “friend” on Plaxo. You don’t feel comfortable accepting the invitation because you don’t consider this person to be a “friend”: you’ve never shared a meal together, you’ve never been to his house–you don’t even know if he’s married or single. But you think: will downgrading the acceptance to a relationship of “business contacts” be an insult?
What you don’t know–what you don’t see–is that this guy only invited you as a “friend” because HE didn’t want to insult YOU by inviting you as a “business contact.” And so we have the Social Networker’s Dilemma.
The truth is that neither of you feel the other one is a “friend” but think that you should connect as “friends” because you don’t want to hurt the other’s feelings or embarrass yourself. In the Social Networker’s Dilemma, both participants are trying to be deferential and polite, but would really both fare better from honesty.
- If you decline the relationship or ignore the invitation (which is, in effect, declining the relationship), you limit the size, scope and potential of your social network as well as the other person’s network by not connecting with one another.
- If you accept the invitation as proposed, you expand your social network’s size, but actually dilute the strength of your social network by weakening the underpinnings of trust of the network.
- If you downgrade the relationship to reflect your true relationship, you both get what you really want: a valuable, expanded and true social network.
Why do we find ourselves in this dilemma? This dilemma happens because both parties are playing a 2.0 game by 1.0 rules. Both parties are putting the social facades of politeness and deference first. However, social networking is part of the 2.0 world–a world governed by openness, transparency and truth. Practicing 2.0 values will put you–and your contacts–in the best scenario in this game of retrobuilding and social digitization.
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Spot on analysis. Imagine the power of your network if you had been able to keep in touch, even tangentially, with people from the various quadrants of your past! I am continually amazed with by the people I have reconnected with…in some cases, it is sheer nostalgia, others create business connections I could have never conceived of earlier.
When participants move beyond ‘the numbers game” the impact of our social, personal, professional (and yes sometimes hidden) worlds can be realized. The impact will be tremendous if we adopt a 2.0 view of connection.
It certainly is a brave new world.
A very thought intriguing post. Reminds me of something Marcia Conner wrote about Socially Awkward Networks. In this evolving world where our past and future are always intersecting, the loose ties come back to haunt us now and again. I would say I use my various social networks each to my own purpose, but I do realize, in limiting my net, I am limiting the potential in which it can be used. However, I am also limiting it in which it can be used against me.
If I don’t want to be “friends” with my parents on Facebook, but connect with them on twitter or myspace, I hope they understand.
Much of this “usage” can be explained, as most social networks provide a link to your “Website”, in which, the case for bloggers, we can point back to our blog post on how we use each network and for what purpose.
This is a great example of the logic which often goes into creation and growth of social networks. The problem is broken down into possible scenarios and the subjective decision making process which leads to the selection of each.
However I think that it may be just as important to consider the creation of contacts in a social network more objectively. Wanting to improve the quality of your connections or strength of your social network is a great goal but the care of your social network should be informed some insights gleaned from network theory:
Strength of Weak Ties: Also known as interpersonal ties. Novel data (e.g., business opportunities, new methods, valuable information) rarely comes from close ties. The people who are closest to you are most likely to know the same things as you. So where does new and innovative information come from? From people you wouldn’t consider a close contact, a weak tie. For example, your Dad’s kayaking friend know what you do for a living. He is at work and his colleague in another department describes a big problem they have to solve. He remembers you, mentions your name and you get a call for a new contracting job. That’s a weak link. The more weak links you have spread among your strong ones (your Dad is a strong link, his pal is a weak link) the higher the probability you will gain from them.
Dunbar’s Number: The magic number of social contacts is … 150. For some reason this number of contacts keeps reappearing in the most successful nodes of social networks. There are some theories as to why but the general gist is that in human social networks it seems to be a recurring pattern. Of course this isn’t always the case, sometimes you need lots of people with small networks and a few supernodes who are highly interconnected to achieve the six degrees of separation we all hear about. But it’s a good working number.
There are plenty of other rules or theories that can help inform how you approach the care of your social network but these are a few to start off with. I’m not saying you shouldn’t make subjective decisions when deciding whether to make a contact. You obviously should, dodgy scammers need not apply. But be cognizant of the more objective and tested network theory frameworks those subjective decisions exist within.
Nicolette,
Thanks so much for your comments. The concept that you’re speaking about–the pleasure and value of reconnecting with connections from your past–I refer to as “retrobuilding.” If you haven’t already, check out my post with that title and also “retrobuilding – part 2.”
Andrea,
Excellent point about connections coming back to bite us now and again: I like your angle that limiting the “potential” of your network can be negative… or positive. Thank you for pointing me to Marcia’s post, too!
Maxine, most of the time, I assume good faith in the community in which I choose to engage. But I will say I have been on the end of Internet stalking. Which is why when sites notify me of a new friend request, I really think before I click to accept. Now knowing that I am completely transparent, I know if someone really wanted to know something about me, where I am at or who I am hanging out with, its not too hard to find out. However, I am fortunate for sites like twitter, facebook, and more that I can block a user from connecting to me if that personal comfort line ever gets crossed again. Where if they are stalking me, at least its not as in my face. 🙂
Dan,
Thank you so much for such a knowlegeable, insightful comment. Yes, I had a printed copy of Clive Thompson’s recent NYTimes article, Brave New World of Digital Intimacy and I’ve been meaning to read for weeks now. I read it after I posted this entry, but before I read or responded to your comments. Your comments about “weak ties” and “Dunbar’s #” echo this article — all the more reason for me to explore these network theories further. Given “weak ties,” I suppose we should all be very open to expanding our digital social networks–we never know when, where, from whome or to whom we might give and/or receive value. My Twitter follower # surpassed Dunbar’s 150 earlier this week. I’ve been thinking about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Again, thanks so much for starting dialogue about my post. The back and forth discussions are what make blogging valuable.
Andrea,
I’ve become so enamored of social media that I’ve become blindsided to the stalking angle. eek. thank you for bringing me back to reality — good points!
OK, so here’s my question. If in the 2.0 world we have a single persona, when we digital immigrants retrobuild our social networks, how does that affect how people know us?
For example, in the physical world, let’s be honest, each of us has different personas depending on the context. I might accentuate some aspects of myself when with my mother-in-law at a fancy dinner, and I might accentuate other aspects of myself when with some buddies at the gym. But in the 2.0 world, there are no such barriers, right? We have a single persona. My mother-in-law can “see” me at the gym, while my buddies can “see” me at the dinner.
Does this lack of barriers then threaten my relationships, whether retrobuilt or not? Or rather, does it force my 2.0 persona to be neutralized, vanila-ized, reduced to the lowest common denominator, so that what people see of me in 2.0 neither offends my mother-in-law nor my buddies?
Paul,
This is a very good point about whether having a single persona threatens our relationships by either making us too “vanilla,” i.e. no one would want to be friends with us because we’re so boring, or by exposing us so much that it threatens certain relationships.
We are the sum of our experiences and interactions offline and online, both with other people and with information, e.g. blog comments. Though 2.0 calls for a single persona, we still have multiple touchpoints. Just because we put ourselves out there doesn’t mean that everyone sees everything: my parents aren’t on Facebook.
Thanks for commenting!
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