I met my SO on the Internet...

We all are captivated by those stories of someone meeting their SO on the Internet. We find them of such interest, because we know that developing deep relationships online is still relatively rare. Related to this topic is this great TED talk: Ze Frank's web playroom, where he makes the point that meaningful relationships can and do happen online. He also makes the point, however, that they don't happen very easily. He has a slide in the video devoted to this concept:

TO FEEL AND BE FELT

REALLY CONNECTING WITH PEOPLE ISN'T EASY

In my last post I asked you to think about your social network, and to actually draw it out on paper. I've heard from a few who are attempting the assignment. This is good! I know the assignment will take some time to complete, and I don't want to rush you.

For now, I'd like to give you an interim assignment. I'd like you to think about the people you have met online-- how many of them have made it to your social network map? How many people on your social network have you never met face-to-face? How many started as online relationships, but eventually evolved into in-person relationships? Finally, and why not ask, how many of you met your significant others online? We'd love to hear your stories.

So you know I'm participating, my social network includes four relationships that started online. Two of the four I have subsequently met face-to-face. The others are still close friends, but we've never engaged in a conversation that wasn't technology mediated.

In my next post we'll discuss what you've learned from mapping your network, and do the outreach math. That probably post it until early next week so you still have a few days to get yours done. I'll look forward to hearing from you.

Determining your outreach?

In our last post we discussed that you reside in a social network that might extend to somewhere around 150 people with whom you have a stable social relationship. These are relationships where you know each individual and how they relate to every other person.

For the sake of discussion I'll ask you to make a list. The easiest way to do this is to get a big piece of paper and put yourself in the middle. Then start by listing your eight closest people-- your strong ties. These will be your spouse, children, parents, siblings, and perhaps a few work colleagues. Then work out from there to your weak ties. When you're finished you should have a pretty complete list of your stable social relationships. We're not after total accuracy here-- we're just wanting to get a rough idea.

How many names did you come-up with? Excepting your closest family, how many of the people on your list are external to your work environment? How many would you consider professional colleagues? Would you like to share your results with us? What percentage of your social network is external-- e.g. they would be a customer, client, acquaintance... I'm looking for two things: 1) How large is your social network; and 2) What percentage of them are external to your own organization.

I'd love to hear from you with your results...

You can only know so many people well

Following on my last post on the difficulty of being a node or a connector in a social network, let's discuss your second big hurdle. You can only know so many people. That number is generally believed to be somewhere around 150. This is Dunbar's Number:

Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships.

That's it. One hundred and fifty people. If you don't like that number please find me another based on any sort of scientific determination. These 150 people are organized into some sort of social relationship-- a network or community if you will. (See: Social Network Analysis)

Christopher Allen in his research on online guilds found:

This all leads me to hypothesize that the optimal size for active group members for creative and technical groups -- as opposed to exclusively survival-oriented groups, such as villages -- hovers somewhere between 25-80, but is best around 45-50.

You belong to some sort of social network. We all do. We don't engineer these networks. We don't network hop . Our networks are volatile and dynamic, but they aren't all that maleable. They reorganize a few nodes (people) at a time. We exercise little conscious control over these networks. What is is.

If mass is dead and social is the future-- then what is the sphere of your influence? In the next post we'll do the math.

Being a Node Isn't Easy

"You must be a node, a connector!" That's the way the story goes, if you can be a connector in
the networked economy your future will be set. So, how do you make that happen? Let's start with your first hurdle.

I'll begin with a story. Last weekend I took a long bike ride to Virginia. It was a bit of a death-march as our route was mapped via Google, and somewhere in there Google lacked some of the necessary details to get us there safely, i.e. you can't ride skinny tired bikes on gravel roads. So, we had a few ride-arounds that added a number of miles to our journey. We don't really know how far we rode as not a single one of us had a functioning odometer (which is another story). We estimated that our little ride was somewhere around 120 miles. Could have been 150 for all we know or maybe even 200. Did I mention it was a death march?

Somewhere around mile ninty we stopped at a country store to replenish our fluids and take on some calories. One of my colleagues, who was bonking badly, purchased a lot of stuff at the store. One of the items she acquired was something called Goody's Powder. I was starting to get a cold last Sunday, and at that moment of the ride I was not feeling very chipper. When she asked, "You want some?" I attempted to answer in the affirmative without appearing too desperate. She proceeded to hand me this folded up piece of wax paper that contained the aforementioned mystery powder. This is where I blew it. I asked, "What am I supposed to do with this?" She demonstrated for me the most macho of the consumption techniques, The Tough Guy:

This is how The King does it. Very simple. Open it, fold, dump on your tongue and swallow. Then, very casually continue whatever you were doing.

Down the hatch it went, but I guess I didn't do so well on the "casually continue..." part as the next words out of her mouth were, "You're not from around here are you?" Outed!

And there-in lies your first challenge in transitioning to a networked mode of working. Online networks aren't any different than non-online-networks. Network members can spot an interloper in a heartbeat. If you want to be a node in a network then you've got to get to know the network's culture, you must contribute, you must live it. You have to be the ball... You have to care enough to know the difference between The Tough Guy, and The Dump and Chase. That kind of deep understanding takes a great deal of time, and you don't scale. Your capacity to understand multiple networks is limited-- actually it's impossible. That will be the subject of my next post.

Thank you but no thank you Starbucks.

Starbucks is going to provide us a curated digital experience when we access the network when visiting their stores.

Beginning Wednesday, Starbucks customers who use the free Wi-Fi at more than 6,800 U.S. company-operated stores will be greeted with the Starbucks Digital Network (SDN) — an exclusive content network curated by the company and designed to enhance the customer’s in-store experience.

No thank you. The difference between wifi and 3G is just not that great for me to have to suffer through intermediation of my network connection. I know what I want, and it knows how to find me.

Your next big challenge: Scaling Time

Great article on real-time services: Real-time + Face Time = the New Primetime

One of the realities of the modern era and the age of continuous information streams is that consumers now expect, rather than simply demand, that their needs be addressed in real time.

Some of my own research uncovered this phenomenon. If you asked people their expectations on speed of service they told us one thing. BUT, when you graphed their satisfaction across the speed of response, it dropped off a cliff the longer you took to meet their needs.

If you're in a business working with the public the new gold standard is, "I want it now." How are you hiring and reorganizing to meet this new expectation of performance? Seems to me that one solution is to embrace freeranging. Office hours are the first thing needing to be abandoned. You have to organize to have people in the flow 24x7.