2009: The internet is an open platform where the users can make their opinions heard and a mode to interact with others. Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, LinkedIn etc are growing by leaps and bounds and everybody is trying to network using these websites for building business relationships, personal contacts etc. Online networks tend to connect hundreds of people which I believe takes away the feeling of exclusivity which would otherwise make individuals feel a part of a group. Now rewind 52 years back to 1957 when the world did not have the internet.
1957: Wednesday 10 group
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704779704574555862616828726.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
In 1957, young men in their late ‘20s began meeting regularly and formed the Wednesday 10 group. It comprised, at various points, more than 20 men; but it controlled the number of members to maintain intimacy yet large enough to ensure that at least 10 members would show up for each of the monthly Wednesday-night meetings. No more than two representatives of any one industry were permitted. The aim of this group was to discuss career developments of its members. Hence, each and every member would update the group about the happenings in his career. The diversity in the group helped the members to gain knowledge about varied fields. As one of the members mentioned “By the end of each meeting, he had a snapshot of what was going on in the realms of law, media, art, finance, real estate, public service and cancer research. It was like reading the newspaper end to end.”
Do today’s new tools of social networking like Facebook, Orkut etc offer the same as the Wednesday 10 group did? I think no, they don’t. I say that primarily because of two reasons:
1. The Wednesday 10 group brought people together from diverse backgrounds and maintained diversity. The quality and diversity of the information flow due to the backgrounds of its members in this group was enormous. Now, if we think about the information flow within our friends on Facebook, it is limited. This is primarily because majority of our friends are people who we studied with in college or people who worked in the same company/industry.
2. Also, the feeling of exclusivity is taken away from individuals when they become a part of large online social networks. As in the Wednesday 10 group the members considered each other as brothers. This is nowhere to be seen in today’s online social networks.
I believe that today’s social networking websites can take some cues from the old ways of social networking to improve their popularity. I would really like to see this happen as we move into the next decade!
1 comment:
Every country and many cities have "old boy" networks like this. But a bit more digging would have shown you that the change is already happening. If you read other entries (I remember Bettina's and another about 10 before yours; I'll try to remember whose) you'll see that there are already online elite groups being formed. So you see, the Old is indeed starting to come over to the New.
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