Luke Alexander's blog

If you’re employed by a marketing or digital agency, and want to get some first hand experience of what is at the core of the term ‘social network’, head down to the Royal Festival Hall on Tuesdays during November from 6-8pm.

I was there for a NaNoWriMo London write-in this week, which was an ample demonstration of online social networking at its finest.  iPhones were out on the table, netbooks flitting between facebook and twitter; if I saw a photo in years to come I would be able to confidently state, based only on evidence of the technology lying around, that it was 2009.

These devices on their own were meaningless; what made it a great demonstration of the power of online social networks is the fact that we were almost all strangers, meeting because we a) had a shared interest and b) had been given the tools to share it.

Indeed, the event brought back to me the meaning of the term, which I use so regularly in my day job that it has begun to lose its meaning.  In fact, the way some marketing professionals use it, you’d think anything which has ever touched a web server would qualify.

Words, even technical terms, should retain a little bit of magic that lets them thrive and grow with their meanings.  Words aren’t fixed concepts, like numbers – they have the benefit of an etymology, heritage and resistance to translation which allows them to mean, in a way, more than their meaning.

Email – electronic mail.  Internet – an international network.  Web – a world wide web of linked information.  All of these terms get submerged in the sheer number of people rushing to market, package and deliver them.

At any rate, this NaNoWriMo meet-up made me re-consider the power of the social network, in its online context.  When I was a lot younger, the technological underpinnings of online activity were much more limiting – no facebook, myspace or twitter.  But social networks were still the order of the day, even if that wasn’t how we referred to them.

Back then, I interacted with my online social networks using livejournal, usenet newsgroups and IRC.  What was true then, however, is still true now.  Social networks are created when people, using whatever tools they have at their disposal, create pathways of regular or expected communication between themselves.  Facebook, linkedin, elgg, etc all provide excellent tools to achieve this, but the core principle is that those users are the active element in the equation.

This is not the same as saying that social networks operate on a content-driven model (which may or may not be true).  Sharing cool virals and whatnot is a great strategy for many companies hoping to take advantage of social networks, but it is not the way to create social networks.  To do this, you need to provide users with the tools they need to connect as well as, of course, a reason to connect in the first place – whether it’s getting to know their colleagues, finding music from new bands, or writing a novel in a month.