Networking wars !

I'm bored!

I'm bored of the "Facebook is better than Google plus because.."
"Google plus is better than Facebook because.."
"Facebook is dead..." "Google plus is stillborn..."

They're different, OK!
They will compete, yes. But competition is healthy. Competition is good. Competition doesn't mean that there has to be just one winner.

Currently I use both. I use them in different ways and for different reasons. That may change, it may not. It depends on whether the underlying reasons for the different uses change.

Facebook:
I have 180 'friends' on Facebook. Every one of them is either someone I have personally met or is a member of my extended family. I wouldn't dream of 'friending' anyone I didn't know.
I use FB as a light touch way of keeping in touch with these people and their lives.
I'm interested in them as people since their lives and mine have touched in some way in the past.

Google plus:
I have 195 people in my circles (and I am in the circles of 134). Very few of these have I ever met. I am interested them primarily because of what they have to say. A large proportion of my interactions on G+ are more like professional networking than 'social' networking.

Could/would I do my 'social' networking on G+? Possibly. Probably.
Could/would I do my 'professional' networking on FB? Very unlikely.

(That last point bears some examination. I have some 'friends' on FB who my relationship with is purely 'professional' but in the absence of anything else, FB was a way of establishing a more personal connection. If/when those friends find their way to G+, I am likely to cull them from my 'friends' list - sorry!)

There is some overlap, some people who are FB friends in my circles. However I suspect that a great number of my FB friends may never move start using G+ (first mover advantage). So I am likely to continue using both. If all my FB friends started using G+ then that might be a reason to abandon FB. But will my sister stop using FB in favour of G+? Will my mother ? (I'm amazed she started using FB in the first place!) My wife ? Unlikely.

So what about Linked In? Or Twitter ?
Well Linked In just feels too impersonal. It's more like a place to put your CV and achievements than to engage in conversations with people. (One of the things I'm hearing a lot from G+ users is about the high level of engagement it seems to engender.)
Twitter? Well I never really took to Twitter. Again, too impersonal and not engaging. I hardly used Twitter at all as a 'tweeter' and not much more as a 'consumer'. But since G+ I hardly use it at all (although I'm sure there are some for whom it will continue to have a role - just not me)

So, people, stop all the "The king is dead, long live the king" nonsense and let people work out for themselves how they want to use these terrific tools.

And if you've never used FB/G+, don't knock it until you've tried it.

The Sunday Times Social List

Image by HowardLake via FlickrSteve Dale pointed out to me that the Sunday Times started a social 'wealth' index earlier this year. The Social List is a development along the lines of the Rich List.
Well, not quite.
The list takes four of the big online social networks (LinkedIN, Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook) and calculates your 'connectedness' and activity. It expresses the result as an index of 'social worth'. I always thought social worth was what you gave back to your community in the shape of volunteering, charity work and the like.

The list will undoubtedly appeal to the narcissists, but I couldn't help pointing it at my social networks (I belong to 3 of them, but not Foursquare). Surprisingly, out of over 47,000 people registered, I came out 27,344th. I was surprised because I almost never look at my Facebook account and rarely Tweet.

There are some obvious omissions in the social stock that the list looks at. There is no way that prolific bloggers with huge followings (including Steve), and users of other microblog sites, Ning, Flikr etc can add their preferred channels. In my mind, the most significant omission however is Google+. Google Circles was touted as the next big thing in social connectivity, but is notable by it's absence from the Sunday Times Social List.

Network Visualisation and more

I attended a networking event organised by TFPL yesterday. If you know me well, you know I like playing with software tools, and I was intrigued by some tools mentioned by Jemima Gibbons, Author of "Monkeys with Typewriters: Myths & Realities of Social Media at Work".
You may have seen some or all of them before and I am sure there are others out there. I thought I'd have a quick play with some of them.

Linked IN
If you are a LinkedIn user, you might be interested in INmaps which enables you to visualise your network.

Here's mine:

http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/share/Phil_Ridout/196065024839027455648601768042894769074

Facebook
I'd not seen friendwheel before which generates images like this:

But another Facebook tool which did the rounds a few months back was Social Graph

Twitter
If you are a Tweeter, then you can understand your 'social capital' on that network by using Peerindex. I'm not a big Twitter user so the results for me are really not worth looking at. But if you are a Twitter user (and care about these things) then it may be worth a look
In the same vein we also have Klout which measures your 'Klout' across several networks.

These tools are all very well but what are the use cases ? When I look at the social graphs generated by InMaps and Social Graph, they don't tell me anything I didn't already know and there's no action I would take as a result of seeing these. But if I were trying to become known as a thought leader or 'influencer' in some field these tools might help me see if I was succeeding and suggest ways of increasing my reach. What would really be interesting is whether there are any similar such tools operating 'within the firewall' and how are they being used.

If you know of any such use cases then please come along to the Business Networking & Collaboration tools Roundtable (KIN Members only) on July 11th