Socia

Yesterday I went for a run and someone asked “Are people running or not?” and I answered yes. The person wanted to be added to the Whatscrapp group but I couldn’t add them because I have no privilieges within that group. I can’t post. I can’t share the group. I can vote “Of course I’m coming” but that’s all I can do.

The person asked, once she was added by the owner of the group, “Can anyone post?” and the answer was “nope” and she said “good, I don’t want too much noise.”

When I was at university the second time, as a mature student I estimated that my social network was around 600 people deep. In light of this it seems absurd that I hooked on to Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Why would it make sense to hook on to both of these technologies when I was already surrounded by people.

It’s even more surprising, given that Twitter came out in 2006, and I had already been at uni for at least two years. Of course it helped that I was at uni when Facebook was still new and exciting because I was in the prime social situation for it to be relevant. If I had been in the world of work instead, then it’s likely I would have ignored FB and Twitter.