Minding the Planet: The Emerging Problem of “Social Overload”: Thanks to the recent mushrooming of social networking systems, I am starting to experience a new problem that I call “social overload.” Now that I am connected to the world via LinkedIn, Ryze, Plaxo, Orkut, and Typepad, as well 6 different IM systems, and several email accounts, I am finding that an increasing amount of my time is spent on “relationship maintenance” tasks like approving or declining relationship and referral requests.
Last week when Google announced it was joining the “social network” game via Orkut, I heaved a great sigh. Personally, I don’t think these various social network platforms are worth the bandwidth they suck, and definitely aren’t worth the time they demand of their users. As currently constituted, they are nothing more than a trendy meme.
I spent some time on Ryze early last year, and genuinely worked hard at trying to make it work, for awhile. Overall I found it a totally disappointing experience. I’m a dedicated and skilled networker, with a large address book that I’ve proven able to leverage to my, and other’s advantage. Online social networking doesn’t even come close to the “meatspace” experience of real networking.
The downfall, I suspect, of these sorts of systems is that they miss the essential value of genuine networking. These systems automate the errors many people make when trying to do face-to-face networking. The crux of successful networking is not acquaintance - it’s mutual value. Networking works when there is some real value to both parties in the exchange. My network yields results from me because the people in my network have received information or contacts or services of value from me in the past. They know I deliver. I have a good reputation with them. As a result, they are willing to introduce me to others. They know I won’t do something that reflects poorly on them for having made the introduction. In other words, the “secret” of networking is not “who do you know?” but “what have I done for you lately?”
As I try and teach people how to network more effectively, this is usually the first hurdle they have to overcome. The novice networker is so focused on what value they can extract from the other person that they never consider that this stranger has no reason whatsoever to facilitate introductions for them or to provide them with any useful information at all. To the contrary, there is a powerful disincentive to do so - the person making the referral might suffer a loss of reputation and a loss of access to an important contact by making the wrong referral. Having an acquaintance in common (the crux of most of the online social networking systems) can lower some of the barrier here, but it’s usually only enough to get an audience with the person you want to network with, not enough to create the necessary atmosphere of trust that will get two people to open their address books to each other.
I’ve long said that one of the pitfalls of automation is that it can serve as a mechanism to help us make mistakes faster. This is generally true of systems that add no intelligence to the workflow being automated, but are primarily systems for digitizing existing analog processes. I believe this is the problem with the first and second generation social networking systems. It takes a lot of time to do face-to-face networking. An obvious assumption is that the process can be improved by making it faster and more efficient, which is what the social networking services try and do.
Unfortunately, this system does nothing to improve the skills of a poor networker, it only increases his or her efficiency in contacting people. Now rather than sapping the time of just a few people per day, the determined by unskilled networker can bother thousands! Worse, due to the astonishing ease and negligible cost of declaring someone a “friend” via these services, the online networker can quickly build up a database of thousands of mostly useless contacts, deluding themselves into believing that their efforts are actually bearing fruit when in fact these contacts remain virtual strangers, no more inclined to be really helpful then when they were anonymous.
Meanwhile, real, effective networking occurs online all the time, aided by technologies like IM, e-mail, and blogging, the same way networking has been facilitated for years by the telephone. What differentiates effective networking from ineffective networking is the approach, not the tools. A skilled networker who is conversant with modern communication tools can be far more effective than one who isn’t - but the unskilled networker, even equipped with top-of-the-line hardware, software, and bandwidth will never match the effectiveness of a skilled networker equipped with a paper address book and a telephone.
Link via Preoccupations, which contains a great deal more thoughtful linkage on the subject.
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/imustbenuts.html
Sun, 25 Jan 2004 12:10:47 -0500
http://www.doug-miller.net/blog/archive/imustbenuts.html
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demiller@gmail.com (Doug Miller)
I’m sitting in an Open House, waiting for the snow and freezing rain to start. Given how all the local news channels have been continuously warning people about the impending storm, it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll have any visitors in either this Open House, or my 3:00 PM to 5:00
I’m sitting in an Open House, waiting for the snow and freezing rain to start. Given how all the local news channels have been continuously warning people about the impending storm, it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll have any visitors in either this Open House, or my 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Fortunately, the later Open is in my neighborhood, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get home. Pulling Open House signs out of the frozen ground out to be real fun, though.
