Social Networking
The Gateway Drug – The Addiction

It starts with an inkling that maybe you had better get in on this social networking thing if you want to grow your business or be in touch with networking contacts – just in case a layoff hits you. So you sign up for LinkedIn. You justify this because it is about work. Your time is too valuable to fritter away on these things just for fun. But now as you look around on there you are finding people you worked with 15 years ago and it intrigues you, so you start searching a little more.

Warning – LinkedIn is the gateway drug. Just when you have taken LinkedIn about as far as you want to, you start having people tell you that now Facebook is the place to be. Much easier to use, more people on it. (Wait, wasn’t that for kids? No, that was pretty much MySpace.) So you just stick your toes in the water in Facebook. Again, easily justified because this is purely for professional reasons. But you notice that a lot of your friends and relatives are on there too. And you start pulling out the college yearbook to get names to look up – even the people you didn’t actually like in college. Because now the actual number of “friends” you have becomes something of a status symbol.

Eventually you start checking your Facebook page before you have your coffee. Then you start to become maybe just a little tiny bit, well, annoyed at the people who haven’t taken the plunge yet and you become a Facebook pusher. And then you find you don’t want certain people “all up in your Facebook” (a phrase totally coined by yours truly so if used, please credit) so you block them or even worse, de-friend them.

Now we come to what I call the current heroin of social networking, Twitter. What a dumb sounding thing, you tell yourself. People around the world just saying what they are doing in 140 characters. Who cares, you say. Oh but again it is a very good marketing tool you are told. So, off you go to check it out. Now you start “following” people – people you know, or total strangers whose “tweets” intrigue you. You start watching these entries that change every single second. EVERY SINGLE SECOND. You, a once private person, are baring your soul to the entire universe, littering the world with your misery, happiness or profound thoughts.

Now, my friend, whether you like it or not, you are officially part of the great social experiment. You will not have a good bagel, bad day, a pimple, or a tragic breakup that you will not share with friends, friends of friends, everyone on out to all 6 degrees. It is inevitable.

SO, see my profile on LinkedIn, join me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter. But, I beg you, if I mention that I am considering a Crackberry – please, arrange an intervention.