Archive for November, 2009

Aristotle had once said, “Humans are social animals”. True, it is our basic nature. We can’t survive outside society. To fulfill our different needs, we have different people in our society? The role based arrangement is well constructed. We deal with colleagues at office while we share our emotions with our friends, families. We need people for each stage of our life and we need them on a daily basis.

One of the blogs at computerworld starts as “Remember back in the day when we worked from 9-5, nights and weekends were reserved for friends and family, and never the twain shall meet?” It further says that “Now that an estimated 23% of American workers telecommute, many use online social networks as a way to stay connected to co-workers and colleagues. Those who are chained to a company desk often use (or sneak onto) Twitter or Facebook to stay in touch with friends outside of work.” It’s a clear indication that the way we network with people is changing. There are many tools which supports our growing demand of less time and more connection. This can be termed as the birth of new social connection, widely known as social media.

Ever since humans started getting the feel of civilization they started living in group, amongst people. There were several changes in the way of living but the basic nature of socializing never changed. It adopted new forms, new mediums and new flavor but essence remained same. Even today when we all feel the crunch of time we love to interact with friends, colleagues, families.

There’s a long research going on the need of socializing. Even the least of social people cracks under the pressure of bearing too much time alone. Why does that happen? What, scientifically, goes on inside a person’s body when they are alone for a prolonged amount of time, forcing them into insanity?

Why we crave to express our thoughts, emotions and ideas? Almost as if we crave to blossom our being among community. Why do we experience loneliness? Why is it that one cannot find contentment, joy, and happiness remaining alone?

These are some tough questions. Human beings have in evolutionary terms always been a ‘social group’. Without having access to other humans or cultures we cannot be human. Language, cognition, emotion, self are all closely intertwined with other people and shaped through numerous interactions from birth throughout adulthood. A very large part of our brains for instance, is mainly concerned with social interaction. Sociality is a defining feature.

Human Web which is also known as six degrees of separation, refers to the concept which says, a person in one part of the world is connected to another person in another part of the world at max six levels of connections. It means a person A from India can reach to a person B in USA in just six steps. This cogitation sounds impressive.  Malcolm Gladwell explains this concept in his book, “The Tipping Point”. He says, “Six degrees of separation doesn’t mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few”.  He further adds, “People who introduce us to our social circle – these people on whom we rely more heavily than we realize – are connectors, people with a special gift for bringing the world together”.

The word “Six Degrees of Separation” is associated with an experiment of Stanley Milgram. Milgram was a famous American social psychologist. When he was at Harvard, He conducted an experiment called “Small World Experiment”. This experiment was a combination of several small experiments of social networks across USA. Milgram’s experiment developed out of a desire to learn more about the probability that two randomly selected people would know each other. This was one way of looking at small world problem; other alternative view was to imagine the population as social network and try to find out the average path length between two nodes. Milgram’s experiment was designed to measure these path lengths by developing a procedure to count the number of ties between any two people.

There are many critiques of this experiment and there are several experiments done after this. Though, Milgram’s experiment still tops the list. When we see these experiments in the context of marketing we realize that connecting to people is not that though. We just need to learn few basics like –

How people are connected to each other?

Factors which influence people?

Who are connectors?

How to become a connector?

Difference between Marketer and Connector?

When we take these basic to social media we get few more question.

How Social Media operates?

How Social Media influences people?

Role of connectors in Social Media?

Social Media as a Marketing Tool?

I’ll try to touch each of these questions in my series of posts on Social Media & Connectors.  Suggestions / Views / Comments are most welcome.