Full Circle Associates

Late last month I picked up a trackback from a del.icio.us user, pickinjava. Pickinjava is exploring social networks on del.icou.us. This morning I went to find a bookmark and could not resist clicking on the “my network” link. Visiting this page for me is like a time/world travel hole into which I love to slip — and usually lose several hours.

At the top was a bunch of bookmarks about Africa from Pickinjava. I started clicking on links, going back to the list and seeing what tags were there, and who else had bookmarked the link. Now I think I have a tiny taste of why Pickinjava is doing this exploration of bookmarking networks. It is addictive.

It is fascinating is to look at someone’s bookmarks and for a moment, try and imagine what they are looking for, what they are interested in, why the bookmarked any particular link. A novel full of ideas spring to mind. It is like a nano-second of slipping into someone else’s skin. Not long enough to really KNOW anything, but a ghost of a sense.

I can’t explain it, but it is touching me deeply this morning. So Pickinjava, thanks for noticing my tagstream which led me to you.

If you are interested in social network mapping, subscribe to Eva Schiffer’s blog, the Net-Map Toolbox. I was just reading her recent posts and what I like about Eva’s blog is that she offers thought provoking questions and is always reflecting on her practice. This is very useful to me. Again, another example of a blog not just as an information dissemination tool, but as a vehicle for reflection and learning. Thanks for the great blog, Eva!

Jon Lebkowsky wrote this quite a while ago on WorldChanging. I had started a draft post and never got back to it. While doing a little blog-keeping today, I found it again and it is worth blogging. (Just a warning… there may be a little flood of blog posts to “catch up.”)

Jon thinks about what we mean by “friends” online. The Value of Connections

I have a lot of connections on Facebook – 415, to be exact. When I go there, I see quite a few friends doing interesting things, and I always have invitations to connect, join groups, join causes, etc. Facebook is a very effective social network platform, perhaps because people like me like the idea of having a place where we can connect with people we know. But the more people we connect with, the more demands there are on our limited attention, and the less truly engaged we can be with anyone.

On the other hand, the more people I connect to on Facebook, the more who will see my stuff. So if I ever do have a cause I want supported, or a message I want to circulate, having a large network would be helpful. The downside is that it feels less social and more like the broadcast model of publishing: one to many.

I do want more Facebook friends, but there are some significant issues to think about if I want to use the network effectively and avoid wasting my — and everyone’s — time. And there’s a distinction to be made between “social” and “mass.” As you get more and more connections you have more social overhead; as you scale up you run into an inherent limit on social media’s ability to remain social. If I value a broad attention base or large audience over effective manageable relationships, I should work from a different set of assumptions.

I still don’t have neat boxes for these thoughts and concepts; I have more that I’ll get into within the next few weeks. Meanwhile I’d like to hear your thoughts…

As I’ve written before, I hit some sort of volume wall the middle of last year. I’ve written about how I am now more selective on adding friends to follow on Twitter. I mostly ignore Facebook friend requests. I totally ignore Plaxo requests. Just the management of the requests has gone over the top, and I can handle a lot. The people I work with in NPOs and NGOs most likely would never even consider the work it requires to maintain a presence on one of the social networks.

But the friends, the contacts, the network is so powerful. Where is the balancing point for any one of us?

Oh as a little side note - an interesting self test on your online identity! I wonder what the relationship is between being “digitally distinct” and overwhelmed by maintaining that status. Oi!

“Your online identity score is 9 out of a possible score of 10. Congratulations. You are digitally distinct. This is the nirvana of online identity. Keep up the good work, and remember that your Google results can change as fast as the weather in New England. So, regularly monitor your online identity.

I have been talking to the folks at Hosteling International USA about how to reach out to and connect with 18-25 year olds about hosteling and traveling. I told Russ Hedges, the CEO, that I did not know a lot about Facebook (one option) but I sure had a great network of people who did know a lot, and many who have focused on the use of Facebook by non profits and NGOs.

I proposed we convene a telephone conversation and toss around some ideas. Besides having this conversation, I suggested that whatever we learned, we would share out - Open Source Research. Russ was game, so I put the invite out on Twitter and within an hour had 8 RSVPs. Social networks in action, right from the start.

Today we shared conversation for an hour. Towards the end, Jim Benson suggested we walk the talk and continue our research on Facebook IN Facebook. We’d start a little group, scan FB for interesting non profit applications, leave links in the group, then reconvene to talk again in a couple of weeks. I agreed to start the group and post the minutes from today’s meeting, to begin that “sharing out” bit. So here it is… Facebook | Open Source Research on FB for Non Profits with Nancy’s Friends

Care to join our exploration? It complements some work Beth Kanter has been doing as well. Imagine, if we all share our research, we’ll either be collectively smarter, or even more confused!

I have been having some casual conversations with a friend at a US non profit who is looking to attract more younger constituents (more on that later.) One of the things that we discussed was which social network(s) should they experiment with? They are seeking to attract people 18-25.

This chart from the folks at compete gives some food for thought. It does not compare demographics, but when you think about Facebook and MySpace it offers some insights.

Alex, in the blog post, noted:

We can see the social graph, as it is online today, consists of mainly personal relationships, though a large group of users belong exclusively to professional social networks and many belong to both. A collective solution to bringing the entire social graph online might do well to take a closer look at the particular needs of this early adoption crossover group.

If you were starting a new social network test, would you think about this early adoption crossover group? How would you reach them?