The Six Stages Of Social Networking.
While spending far too much time deciding the best way to activate some of those social networking applications that I've acquired but not adopted, I came across the inimitable Nora Ephron's six stages of email. The parenthetic explanations are mine.
Stage One: Infatuation (communication is new)
Stage Two: Clarification (communication seems simpler)
Stage Three: Confusion (communication multiplies)
Stage Four: Disenchantment (communication overload)
Stage Five: Accommodation (communication reduced to grunts)
Stage Six: Death - Call me. (communication returns to manageable levels)
Methinks that as people switch from network to network in order to solve the aggravations of this progression, we're all going to go through these stages faster and more frequently in future. I just hope people ultimately get a better understanding of communication and how to optimise it because joining and overseeing myriad networks is not progress.
posted by john dodds @ 10:09 AM
3 Comments:
"I just hope people ultimately get a better understanding of communication and how to optimise it because joining and overseeing myriad networks is not progress."
Spot on John. I'm a member of far too many networks myself at the moment, and the cycle is increasing.
Btw, you coming to Chinwag on Thursday?
No idea what that is Will.
John - I love this (and your comments on it). I use something when it's useful and I abandon it when it no longer works for me. Right now there are a few places that work for me. Wouldn't it be an interesting product/service if someone came up with a way to consolidate your presence on different networks (like Trillian does for different IM services) so that you could monitor and interact with them all from one place!
It's the people that I want to keep in touch with and share things with (and learn from!), I don't really care about which network they're in! (I kind of just keep following them).
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