Daniel, you’re welcome and your comment I’m sure mirrors the way many feel. I plan to write more on this issue as I am pretty passionate about social media. I am also a LION but for LI I don’t mind all the connections because it helps me to help my career marketing clients. Although if my network ever got to 10,000 I might be losing my mind! Thank you so much for the compliment. I really appreciate everyone who takes time to come here and chat. I learn so much from you all and that is truly a blessing!

Hi Neal! Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments. Your comment certainly provides a different viewpoint. I am definitely going to revisit this topic. Although we are not physically interacting we are still interacting using social media tools. I always keep in mind too that at the other end of my internet connection is a real person so the same rules of engagement apply. Although as you mentioned we do have choices. Thanks Neal, you have provided food for thought!

Melissa, your approach is smart. I am a believer in the tools BUT I do think that people should choose to use them wisely. No one will die from lack of social media tools. LOL!

Karen Swims last blog post..In the Zone

Melissa Donovans last blog post..A is for Apple

The way I see it, what social media allows us to do is exist in a different way, a distributed way. This allows for a different sense of identity, one that by its very nature has different boundaries and structures for possible behaviors.

This means that rather than having an uncomfortable confrontation with someone met randomly through a duty rather than an interest-based event who has begun to plague me, I instead have connections created by interests and professional activity that I can block, ignore, or cease following if they become a problem. Your example is of something that occurs in the physical world, but here I never “have” to interact with anyone. I can choose it. This choice makes all the difference.

In addition, in the physical realm you are limited by the limits of your time/space. We “just happened” to be born, grow up, go to school, etc, in certain places and times. We are situated physically in a way that limits our possible interactions. So we make the friends and contacts it is feasible for us to make, and make do with that.

Through social media and the net, all of this is gone. Now all the people in a field, theoretically, could know each other and collaborate. No longer is anyone limited by being in a small town or in another country.

Great points, though. It can become a problem, but the internet paparazzi don’t lay in wait in your bushes, they just lurk and drool over your tweets. There is a fundamental difference there.

Neal “thePuck” Jansonss last blog post..Ten Steps to Being Everywhere in Social Media