What did we do before social networking?

I am very lucky to have many good friends with whom I regularly have heated debates on a wide range of topics. The last few days have been no different and it has set me off thinking about the social networking craze.

I Facebook. (Or "I FB" as one friend put it recently). I am on LinkedIn. I am learning to Twitter (or not). I think I need a blog. I used to have a MySpace page. I have a mobile phone that runs the Facebook and LinkedIn applications, and I then have Yahoo's "OneConnect" application installed so I can update multiple social networking sites with my status in one go and read what all my contacts are doing in a single "stream" or "pulse" of information without having to go to all the different web sites individually.

Why?

Well, I think I have a reasonably complicated life from a logistical point of view. I am Englishman that has lived in America and France and has a very extended set of friends. Just a few years ago I would probably have lost contact with these friends once I moved away but with the new social networking phenomenon that is Facebook I am now almost as connected to each of them as if I still lived among them.

I have had about 8 jobs over the last 25+ years and over the last couple of years I have gathered together almost all of my previous business contacts in my LinkedIn address book. I genuinely use this 300+ network of people to answer questions and find resources to help me when needed.

So what did we do before these new sites came along? Well, in one of my debates with friends, it was pointed out to me that we have always been engaged in social networking. Anyone who has pinned a notice to a notice board at work or in their local shop, or who has taken time to produce a Christmas update letter that they have photo copied and posted to friends and family with their Christmas card, or even the people who have spent a half day of their holiday sitting down to write out a small pile of post cards has been a social networker but using older technology. (Credit for this observation goes to Ian Farmer who you can follow here; http://twitter.com/ianfarmer )

Instead of a notice board in the staff cafeteria at work and instead of postcards or the annual Christmas update letter many of us now use MySpace and Facebook and a whole host of other sites to keep our friends, family and colleagues up to date on a day-to-day basis (or minute by minute in some cases).

From my own point of view, I find it interesting that I have never, ever, pinned a notice to a notice board anywhere. Soon after I moved to the USA I did take time to produce an update that I printed many times and sent to a range of friends but it only happened on that 1^st year. I think I can safely say I have sent less than 5 postcards in my entire life and they were probably only purchased and posted because they were rude!

So why do I (we) spend time on these social networks?