The Yaxis Live by Rajesh Kumar

Feel free to modify the title and include business network as well and ask the question again.

The proliferation of social platforms on the net and the urge to be seen as connected has created a situation when one keeps on receiving invitations to connect from complete strangers. Many times I ask them back if we met somewhere or were part of any common group activity. Most of the time, there is no answer (indicating a non-serious request) or a bland ‘I saw you are connected to so and so and therefore I want to be connected to you’ or some equally incomprehensible response. And most of the time when you add a person to your network, you have nothing to do with them even for years. In other words, you neither write a mail, not exchange information, nor do any collaboration with them for anything meaningful -Unless taking a movie quiz means productive and meaningful collaboration to you. How are your 30 contacts worse than my 500 and ever growing? Maybe 500 contacts against my name looks good to me, gives me good self-esteem, ads to my prestige in the ’social’ network. And then?

What very few people understand is that quality, not quantity and focus, not diffusion matters. Seth Godin has a fairly straight take on this and I don’t see how you can disagree to this.

To be fair, social networking can be divided into personal social networking and business social networking both of which have so far served in helping people be loosely connected with each other. That essentially would mean that if I have a goal, I should be able to connect and collaborate with folks who can possibly contribute to that goal. That goal could be business(locating people who serve a certain business purpose), personal ( connecting with real friends and acquaintances- friends who you know in real life), pleasure (travel information, hobby groups). Will it be wrong in suggesting that spending extraordinary effort in growing network is like living life in a party all the time where we get to know and meet people. Or mindlessly adding to your contacts list is like trying to become friends with all people at an an airport or a train station! Most of the time one never meets people again. And certainly not all of them. When we go to conferences, usually we love to exhaust our business cards and bring back one full stack of them from people we met at the conference to really feel mission accomplished! (Most of the time we trash almost all of them immediately, or keep piling them on the desk for few weeks or days and then show them the trash-can!).

What is your social network?

(Post dedicated to Vishal Rana of Klamath Falls, Oregon. Vishal and I reconnected via Facebook recently, 19 years after graduating from school together and loosing contact. Vishal, your voice remains the same, and many thanks for the call this morning).