VentureBlog: Conserving Social Capital
December 17, 2003 - 6:25pm — bmann
The article talks about guarding our time and relationships as social networking sites grow.
This neatly parallels some recent experiences of mine with LinkedIn. Scott Loftesness (which is where I saw the pointer to the article) echoes thoughts I had on LinkedIn a while back:
I'm finding there's just not much of a "there there" for me. Nothing that draws me back to regular usage. Somehow expanding LinkedIn's view of my network just doesn't get me excited -- like they think it should! There's certainly nothing there I'd be willing to actually pay LinkedIn for!
Tribe.net and the Vancouver-based Zerendipity are much more interesting to spend time at. Perhaps in part because I've limited connections there to "people I've met in person"?
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Comments
Meet People Websites.
These sites, as far as I've seen, offer just about nothing compared to, say, joining a sailing club, a technology group, a Chamber of Commerce or Board of Trade. I've had a few interesting discussions, but mostly there just isn't any significant participation. You can get participation in Slashdot, but in Tribe.net there are less than ten people in the UVic and Apple ex-Employee groups, as well as the group for The OC.
What's the point participating in websites seeing a slow adoption? How are they ever going to catch on?
Are we placing too much emphasis on Software and not enough on Social?
So, Graham, how many people h
So, Graham, how many people have you invited?
How often do you post? I bet your participation would increase if you joined a LOTR tribe (there must be one).
It's all chicken-and-egg. Meetings in real life can enhance digital communications, and vice versa.
I, personally, haven't gone on a "recruitment drive" to get lot's of people in, mainly because there has to be a willingness to be involved, plus I don't want to lock people into one system. Tribe.net is still my favourite for casual interactions.
I also find that I have had lots of interesting interactions. I check the site about once a day, and now there is the option to get email digests of postings to various tribes.
from bbs to friendster...
one of the most persistent and successful communities: The W3ll.
no muss, no fuss, just people talking to each other.
all that is old...
is new again.
Social software scene is re-learning (making explicit that which was implicit) everything we learned growing up about the politics of relating to other people, to other cliques.
The way I choose to conserve this capital is not to join, which makes me... anti-social.