Well, apparently not. At least according to
Facebook,
MySpace,
LinkedIn,
Plaxo and other business and social networking platforms that offer "
People you may know" tools, or algorithms that determine who you may
also know based on who you know.
I tend to agree that I don't necessarily know who I know. Pretty regularly, in fact, the name of a person I've forgotten about will show up and I'll be reminded that I do, in fact, know that person. And then we'll connect and reminisce and sometimes new and better things will come from it.
In other cases, whether it's through the People you may know tool or via other means, you may end up "knowing" people you don't know. I sometimes hear people say, "I never invite or accept invitations from people I don't really know." But I'm almost sure that approach leaves friendships and opportunities on the table and fails to leverage the technology that is at your fingertips.
How's that? Broadly speaking, the value of your network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes you have. In other words, add a node and you increase the value of your network by a bunch. In a business or social networking context, you are a node and everyone else you are connected to is a node. Each of those individuals is connected to their own set of nodes as well, and so on. You can imagine how big things get pretty quickly.
Think about a small network with lots of people who know each other and share similar ideas - your "core" group of friends from high school or college, for example. All that redundancy means you are exposed to the same ideas and opportunities as the nodes of your network.
Now consider a larger and more open network with lots of loose ties and lots of nodes. A tie can mean many things; it could mean that you're really close friends, but could also mean that you share an interest in music, or went to the same business school, or play the same sport, or worked at the same firm, or grew up in the same town, or traveled to the same vacation spot, or have the same kind of pet. I could go on ad nauseum about the different kinds of ties nodes can have, and it's easy to see how much more valuable such a network can be.
A big part of the value of going to business school, for example, is the network it gives you access to. Harvard is a classic example: what is a key part of value of a Harvard degree? Simple - they hire each other, and the fundamental tie they have is nothing other than the fact they attended the same school.
The network I have from attending Kellogg has done the same - it has given me access to people, ideas, experiences and opportunities that I would not have otherwise had. The difference today, though, is that broadening that network beyond just your own class is significantly easier - on Facebook or LinkedIn, for example, you can connect with people from any class you want going back decades and dramatically increasing the value of that network.
To take another example, let's say you're a struggling musician and you want to switch gears and go to law school so that you can make a decent living. If your network nodes consist mainly of your other musician friends, good luck getting your foot in the door. Even if you've got Eric Clapton or Bret Michaels or Carrie Underwood in there, still might be tough. But if your network includes folks who have law degrees, you can learn about the application process. You can develop an understanding of what the experience is like during and after. And most important, you can determine whether it's really something you want to do.
There are people you don't want to know, of course, or people you no longer want to know or only want to know in a certain way. But generally those goals are achievable too using online networks - you can decide not to include someone in your network, for example. Or if someone has rubbed you the wrong way you can "un-know" them, most of the time without them even knowing the difference. And in some cases you can even customize the side of you that you want to show to the world, or even to disparate individuals.
That last point is really quite interesting and is something Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook is working on developing further. Based on your digital persona, one person could know you as a rock star musician while another knows you as an academic. Someone might know you as a dog lover while another knows you as a cat lover. Or maybe you're a blogger to some but have a day job to others.
Talk about the potential for split personalities.
You know?
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