Last week, on this same day, I attended the Digital Family Reunion in Los Angeles. It had been a long time since I had attended a networking event. And I was thinking about why that was. Then I realized...who needs networking events when I have Facebook and LinkedIn? It was sort of weird walking around and seeing some of my Facebook friends in person (a few of which I didn't really know before I friended them). I saw Ben Mendelson, the president of the Interactive Television Alliance (ITA), virtual "friend."
"Ben," I said, "You look just like your Facebook picture. Good to see you in the flesh."
As we talked, he told me that a lot of people who don't really know him, like myself, have tried to friend him.
"I'm not accepting any new friends -- not unless they are in the ITA. I have almost reached my limit."
Apparently in Facebook, one can only have 5,000 friends and he's up to 4,347 as of today. But, like the real world, true networking extends beyond your friends to your friends' friends and he and I have 48 mutual friends. He was very gracious at the event, however, and it was good meet him but was it really necessary?
In fact, I'm not really sure that I got that much out of the event except heartburn and a headache while trying to park. I loved catching up with two of my old bosses but I'm not sure that will help me get new business. It seems that I'm not alone in my opinion.
The Wall Street Journal recently posted an article about the death of tech conferences. It was mainly talking about big conferences. Apple is going to stop exhibiting at MacWorld...Comdex died. It's sort of sad as I always loved going to big conference for clients. It was fun and exciting and I'm the kind of person who talks loud enough and fast enough to get the media's attention.
But what really made me laugh was Nick Wingfield's closing line (BTW, also a "friend" of mine from Facebook), "If the economy keeps getting worse, maybe even those get-togethers [the smaller ones] will eventually be replaced by people friending each other on Facebook."
And that was exactly what I was thinking the other night at the Digital Family Reunion!
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I think it's a matter of reach; online you get a lot more "bang for your buck" in how many/how deeply you can reach people. Whereas in person, and even for a gung-ho networker at a big event like DFR, you may only talk to a dozen people, and many of them for just a couple of minutes. That said, it's often hard to get a level of trust/understanding with folks you only know via Facebook/Linked/etc.
ReplyDeleteThat's probably true about the trust. However, if you're comfortable using the IM feature of Facebook, you can actually have a "conversation" and keep our connection going.
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