Does being over-networked mean having a low quality network?

In my quest to understand who and how we use social networking website, I’d launch the conversation with heavy users.Definition:

To put it in a nutshell, I’d define a heavy user in term of number of contacts in the profile. One could consider the number of visits, time spent, or other criteria but I arbitrary chose the number of contacts in Profile.

Arbitrarily, I would say that a heavy user has more than 250+ contacts (a lower number would give sens as well)

Question: What does it mean having a lot of profile in your profile?

Let’s be frank. How many persons you really keep in contact? 100-150 persons?

I said frankly!!!

Hmmmmmm, 60-70?

So what does it mean when someone make of his network profile a Xmas wish list of names?

The persons I know and that are really good in networking are not using online social networks. They are social networks.

Of course, if your job is to develop your network for professional reasons, I see recruitment professions for instance, the question is different. But for the others?

I made a test. I tried to contact persons in my network in order to obtain a contact. I’ve tried those who are very (over) networked on online social networks and those who are reasonably networked.

The result is that the heavy users do not answer to telephone or do not pass contacts… Sad, no? Or maybe I am not a person one can introduce?

For non-heavy users, they answer to the phone and pass contacts…

So. Taking into account that I am still the same person when I am calling these two kind of network users and that there is not difference of hierarchy in the persons I contacted, is there some consequences to take from this short experience?

Without studying too long this issue, I would say that heavy users are wanna-be networked persons but are not really, or persons that didn’t really understood the interest of these kind of services…

Online social networks are made to facilitate the exchange of contact, aren’t they?

Being networked is global and time occurring, i.e. in real life, your are networked at one moment. Social networks of a person changes, moves, grow but also diminishes according to the time and the space.

This is not the case for online networks. With online networks, you add contacts like pearls and keep it all the rest of your life (who is really deleting contacts from his profile when is not anymore in contact with a person?).

In a normal life, you meet always the same persons. And you learn to know and respect these persons by meeting them again and again.

When you have 250+ contacts, you don’t really know the contacts you have.

And when you need to introduce some of your contacts to another contact, you have a problem as you need to introduce two persons you don’t know…

So do Heavy users = Low quality networks?

Well, let’s think about this…

 

Online brand community – hairmust.com

We are now working hard to launch a L’Oréal professionnel online brand community. We had a look around and we didn’t

find any similar social network around.

The magic of doing something new is that you loose your time convincing yourself that something similar should already exist somewhere.

I didn’t find yet. But I will keep on searching ;+)

There was the Muniz article in 2001. Then nothing during a long time.

And for the last months, some new articles on online brand communities.

We see some examples of companies trying to use their corporate websites and add blogs (what is the point?). We see here (in Czechia) some telecom companies creating communities around … Music (I have to come back to university and study strategy once for good)!!! But no brand creating a real dynamism around their brand in using social networks.

Even Harley Davidson’s one didn’t convince me. The unofficial community seems to be more dynamic than the official one.

Of course, there are the online brand communities that Hide there brand (Sun type on Java language).

So my question is: Is there a reason why brands do not play the game of online brand communities or hide their brand? Is infiltration in Myspace or facebook the only way?

Maybe we’ve been very lucky to meet the right person (sure, we were) who shared our vision of what the community can bring to the brand.

Now we are looking at the calendar. In one month, we will start to test the site.

Too much to do. No time to think.

I reckon this sentence of an American author: “the innocents didn’t know that it was impossible. So they did it…”

It is our second social network website. I didn’t remember for the first one that it is such a pain…

Social network i.e. treat me right, my Lord

It’s only these last days that I finally understand what is, I believe, a corner stone of online social networking websites: scaring your employer!!! 

I am a curious participant of professional social networks: Linked in, Xing for example Curious because this is an advanced use of community websites and curious as I always had doubts on the evolution of this kind of sites. 

There is basically two kind of persons using these networks: the soft users (those who registered and will not come back after the used this server 3 or 4 times) and the heavy users (those who will develop their list of contact and will follow who added who to the list). 

I am right in the between, wondering why these servers are not so attractive even if thousands of persons are registered. The traffic is there, but the retention is not. I had problems to understand the logic (as I think that I understand the motivation) of having a list of dozens of contacts. This may be useful between persons that are playing the game: Contact me if you need a contact – you’ll help me in return next time. I met many singular example of persons accumulating contacts (and they are no head hunters) but not willing to share them. 

These is in thinking at a particular person that I found out the new application of online social network. You are publicly claiming the fact that you are looking for a job. 

Often, the employer and colleagues are in the network. As a result, they know when you are adding contacts of competitors, head hunters, recruitment agencies, potential employers, … And this is a way to tell to the employer: “look, I am in contact with all these persons.

So treat me right or I leave”. Before, the confrontation was not that clear. No names or companies quoted. Now, we list them publicly. Business is tough. Employees reacted. 1/1 

PS. One funny thing still: If someone found out a non-ridiculous way to send the message of invitation to join one’s network, please let me know: the sentence of Linked in: I would like to add you to my network (because What?) is so bad…