What the heck is a "social network?"

OK, you know that college kids use Facebook. But what does "social networking" have to do with me?

Associations have provided ways for their members to network for years -- at shows, in chapters, at conferences, and increasingly on line. This site is the latest evolution in this trend.

Think of the center section of the main page of the site as your "newspaper" for what's going on in this community. You can certainly stay up to date by checking the home page frequently. But more likely, you'll want to set up a series of e-mail alerts customized to your needs. You can get a feel for it from this screen shot.

It might take a little while to get the hang of it.

But as you think about this network, consider the potential if 1,000 or 10,000 or 50,000 knowledgeable participants in this industry are connecting to share experiences and best practices.

One last analogy. Lots of you have participated in listservs. Think of this kind of community as a listserv on steroids, without all the annoying character jibberish that often seems to accompany an e-mail journal for a listserv.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Elkins on June 9, 2008 at 2:48pm: For those looking for more information on Social Networks, and for anyone getting ready to deploy SharePoint or Lotus, I would highly recommend reading the book Wikinomics by Tapscott and Williams. You can also find presentations from Tapscott online.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dan Keldsen on August 4, 2008 at 9:14pm: Michael - sorry, delayed reaction. Agree that Wikinomics is a great read - we reference the business models they discuss in the Enterprise 2.0 training we're just wrapping up. For those who haven't read the original Wikinomics, might want to take a gander at the updated version that came out recently. Expanded, corrected, refined. The Wikinomics Playbook is also available, so far as I can tell, not yet as a book, but as a beta PDF.

My only confusion is that I don't see a connection between Wikinomics and SharePoint or Lotus. Is there an explicit connection mentioned in the book? (new edition that is? I have the old, and there's nothing there)

BTW - the transcription of Don's keynote from the Enterprise 2.0 2007 conference is great material. I hadn't realized that he had been so heavily involved in his research leading up to this book for around 20 years. Smart man, and able to translate it to the masses - great combination.

Cheers,
Dan; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Melinda on August 4, 2008 at 1:56pm: This is just too cool! I truly appreciate the time it took to set this up and make it work for us. I look forward to learning how to use these tools and incorporate some best practices for social/business networking into my daily grind. ;-); ▶ Reply to This