Essentially, Social Networking is just marketing for people. I mean, you market yourself for friends, new contacts, new business partners, Etc. It wasn’t long before Tila Tequila became the #1 MySpace user. Social Networking is here to stay. Why? It’s all about the ability to influence.
Lee Maicon posted an interesting entry comparing the social network of tobacco smokers from 1971 and 2000. There was an interesting connection between the two:
Smoking & Social Connections: Years 1974 and 2000.
In a nutshell, yellow circles are smokers and non-yellow circles are connections to friends and family. What we can see is that over the past 29 years, smokers have become less distant and essentually “outcasted” in people’s social networks.
This is one example of the power through social networking yields. Much like smoking became a huge hit in the 70s, it has actually decreased substantially since then. (Probably with some help via legislation aimed to prohibit smoking in public places.)
I see a connection here. Do you?
