Social Networking Websites and Meyrowitz: A Fantastic Dissociation between where you are and where you want to go.

"Taking from where you are to where you want to go!" Isn't that one of C.W. Post's tag lines?

Joshua Meyrowitz was quite brilliant in predicting the social impacts of new media. He wrote about how the advances in communication technology has led to new mediums that destroy the distinctions between social space and physical place. Meyrowitz wrote that physical place was once the determining factor in social influence and social impact. With the powers that social networking sites now provide to the common man, this is no longer the case.

What social networking websites like Linked In do is that they totally erode the physical and social barriers that previously hindered the professional development of the ambitious student or entrepreneur. Like Meyrowitz says, "Physical distance as a social barrier began to be bypassed through the shortening of communication distance." It has dissolved the boundaries that previously isolated individuals from connecting with other career oriented individuals. Now, they can connect, communicate, and collaborate with each other online, or even collaborate on certain projects remotely, and then combine their efforts later. I see tremendous possibility in these types of sites.

I was recently introduced to a new social networking website by Mr. Jason Cascone, my career counselor in PEP. The website is called Linked IN, and it is a social networking website designed for professionals to use and connect with other professionals across the country and across the world. There is so much to this site that directly relates to what Meyrowitz was talking about, I don't think I can cover it all in one post.

Linked IN provides a way for professionals (and aspiring professionals such as myself) to create a profile for themselves online and use it to build a reputation for oneself online. Now, in the classical sense of the word, a reputation has been defined by what your peers, superiors, and colleagues think and say of you, despite your own efforts. It was built handshake by handshake and mostly face to face (though rumors can also impact ones reputation). What this site does is completely pull the power away from others and re-establish this power in the individual.

With Linked IN, you are in control of how others professionals perceive you online, and you can communicate your vision, your goals, and your accomplishments in a way that you could never REASONABLY communicate before. With your profile on Linked In, it is possible to communicate all that you need to about yourself professionally, and to connect with others via groups, discussion boards, and first and second and third degrees of connection. This, for an socially unsophisticated geek like me, vastly more attractive than networking at some dinner party, where I am tempted by the snacks and unsure of how to approach others.

In face to face networking, you only have about two to three minutes before the other person loses interest, or before you say something stupid enough that they are turned off. The resume is the print media form of your reputation, but when you are applying for a job, it is often lost in a stack of comparable resumes on an employers desk. The business card is the other, more compact, networking print medium, and its function is hardly obsolete.

This site is comparable to Facebook, but not in the sense of "I wonder what my friend drank last night at that party?" or "Who has written on my girlfriend's facebook page?" Linked IN incorporates many applications, like facebook, to enhance your profile, but they should be used cautiously and with purpose.