Social Networking - the uses of contacts.

Have just read an amazing article on Commetrics about social networking and how we should be doing it.

There is an interesting passage "Electronic communication channels, which include telephone, fax, e-mail, instant messaging, and video conferencing, have been examined by previous research. These studies have attempted to extract social network structures by looking at e-mail only and some reported that e-mail alone defined 72% of a social network’s density, the total number of edges implied by merging email and chat explained 85% of the overall network density (see p. 7 for details on this)" This, I think, adds on to Dave's post in that we often think too much of email and don't look at the other aspects of communication.

It goes on to give stats that the closer in proximity you are, the fewer the emails. (Kind of obvious I think) But something that is interesting is that so-called loose-ties (people you don't speak to/email often) are contacted when you have a tough decision to make. The full white paper can be seen here

Using a social network for collaborative problem solving can be much more beneficial than one thinks. By contacting an acquaintance with whom you have infrequent contact for a solution from a different perspective can often give you a fresh view of a problem (and of course you can always ignore the advice without treading on toes) Your indirect contacts can be useful... Nurture them and treat them as a living system.