Anti-social networking

You’d be a fool to publicly seek advice on why exactly you need a Twitter account, unless of course you wish to be relentlessly mocked and accused of being an anti-digital, analogue-fascist curmudgeon.

While there’s nothing wrong with flinging your CD’s in the bin after a decade of gathering dust alongside your now retro six-disc CD changer, much can be gained from not retiring all ‘ancient’ mediums.

When I reminisce over two university stints within a decade, I find the first course I attended was a much more interactive, sociable experience. There was no Facebook, MySpace was only just taking off in the US and broadband was a distant dream. Texting was the new talking and cheap mobile deals were finally a reality. The human race appeared to better connected in ‘real life’.

There were over a hundred contacts in my mobile (probably around the same number of people I’m ‘friends’ with on Facebook now), but the difference was I actually met up with these people, we went to gigs, the cinema, for coffee, it was a real life experience. Sure, hundreds (possibly thousands) of texts were exchanged, but the impersonal brevity of text language encouraged real life meetings for the purpose of real life conversations, free of 140 character limits. 

But as the (anti?) social networking age beckoned, real life networking dwindled and I found myself communicating online more and more, and my circle of good friends slowly shrinking. Thinking of all the friends I have on Facebook, there are a few I chat to now and again and fewer still that I ever see in ‘real life’.

That said, I can’t deny the existence and daily use of my Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts. They are an excellent way to communicate with people who you otherwise might lose contact with, or indeed never meet in the first place.

But purely virtual relationships held over social networks are inherently anti-social so making a lasting first impression online is much more difficult than in the ‘real’ world - it’s no surprise that out of all the digital nattering, the Tweetup was born.

The Tweetup is the perfect way to materialise virtual relationships, and strengthen them. As a freelancer or contractor it is particularly important to be able to put a name to a face as the entire premise of freelance relationships is trust.

But don’t restrict real life social activity to Tweetups; fairs and events are becoming increasingly popular with new meetup sites popping up everyday encouraging niche groups to form solely for the purpose of making real life contacts.

So when it comes to making new business contacts, and indeed friends, broaden your social horizons with a few simple moves: join a local freelancers or industry network, get some old school business cards made up and above all, leave your Blackberry at home!