Jeffrey Dunster

How much do you trust your friends and family? Would you trust them enough to pick your major for you? How about your spouse? That may seem absurd to you, but we make many important decisions in our lives believing that they are ours alone. Are they? In practice, most of us consult friends and family, even strangers, about important decisions we must make. We are social creatures that depend extensively on each other.

I want to take a moment to share my philosophy of cultivating your social networks, learning how to trust them, and improving how you use them.

Some people socialize and connect with people naturally. They thrive on interaction. They collect friends and acquaintances like a light attracts insects. I call these people "social hubs". We all know a few. They organize parties, outings, and some are excellent match-makers. They are people people. And, for the most part, we like to be around them.

Other people find socializing a challenge, a bore, and even a threat! They thrive on solitude, and maybe one-on-one interactions with the right people. But these people are still fundamentally social creatures, just in a different way. They socialize with words, things, patterns and designs, and a host of other, less interactive means. Their networks may seem small, measured against the other type of network, but theirs is a high-quality, different type of network.

You might be one or the other, or both. In either case, they both need and use social networks. A social network is a web of connected associations between people. The "threads" of the web are made of many different means; some are stronger than others. Some webs are larger than others, but they nearly always intersect and connect with all other webs. Until the Internet came to the masses, few could trace and use these connections effectively. Those who do use them, will always thrive in the face of problems.

Identify Your Networks

Social networks have always existed. Everyone has at least one. So take a moment to think about yours: family, friends, neighbors, church members, students and teachers, peers at work, people you commute with or pass regularly in life. The only real limit to your network is how you define it.

Do you use Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, or any other official networking services? Do you keep a Rolodex, an address book, a "little black book"? Who's in your phone speed dial? Define one of your social networks for the rest of this exercise.

How do you depend on this network? How do you maintain it? For a family network, you might have family reunions. You may have a few, trusted relatives that you seek counsel from, or they from you. You may care a lot about each other, but often lack much time together. Your connections are made from similarities, loyalties, tradition, and love (hopefully). In many cases, you also share fates (i.e. if a sibling marries a jerk, you all suffer).

How does this network interact with others you have? Who do you know in common? As you walk from network to network, you will begin to see the enormity of your collective. This is powerful. But most people overlook the majority of their network and focus on a few, reliable individuals. Who are they? How do you keep in touch with them?

These questions should help you understand your network and, I hope, make you realize just how large yours is. Once you see its importance and its scope, you can begin to cultivate it, weed and prune it, and strengthen its parts into a real safety net, a resource for fulfillment and joy.

Manage Your Networks

One skill that people people have, and which we must all cultivate, is keeping track of individuals. This might be through an address book, a cell phone, card files, email lists and forum memberships, or maybe just knowing a few "social hubs" that are central to your own networks. With the Internet, we have a new medium that is really empowering.

I wish that there were a central, open, ubiquitous service for maintaining a social network. There isn't. A few that I use include: Facebook (for friends and family), LinkedIn (for professional connections), personal address books in email and Instant Messaging apps, the BYU directory, and other minor directories I collect. Each has its pros and cons. Both Facebook and LinkedIn are services that I subscribe too (for free), and thus may disappear someday. Most of the others are electronic and may be lost or obsoleted. Thus, cultivating your networks requires regular attention just to stay alive.

On the other hand, your networks are uniquely yours. How you care for them is secondary. What is necessary is that you use them, understand the various "sub-nets" and their attributes, and allow them to change. Right now, Facebook and LinkedIn serve most of my needs. Here's how:

LinkedIn
LinkedIn serves a narrower purpose. As my professional network, it includes those I know and can recommend to others (an important condition), as well as links into their respective networks. It also serves as a directory and a live resume, of sorts. LinkedIn continues to add other features and services, but it is fundamentally a directory based on social networks of reputation. It also does something I cannot personally do: connect my networks to others and make mine even better. As I write this, my extended network (up to three connections away) includes over 336,000 people.

A few people on LinkedIn do not restrict "un-recommendable" people from their networks, but I do. I would like to be able to add people to my network that I don't know, but might meet some day, if I can classify them as such and not imply a recommendation.

I like LinkedIn because it separates my professional life from my personal. It also provides a central place to ask questions, meet new people, and keep track of all my friends and acquaintances which have a professional side.

LinkedIn also provides one means of finding and contacting me from the Internet at large—without requiring my email address, or other contact info.

Many of my LinkedIn contacts are also in my Facebook networks.

Facebook
Facebook is my casual, personal networking service. I use it far more often than LinkedIn, but for different reasons: I can define many sub-networks. I can restrict private information at several levels. I can search for lost connections through others' networks and dynamically build my own. I have found many, many lost friendships through Facebook.

[Out of time. To be Continued...]