Social Networking: Fad Or Trend? By Robert Joiner At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

I saw a picture the other day. A middle-aged guy with a nice round belly was standing by himself at the water cooler, while everyone else in the office was gathered together, laughing, and enjoying one another. The caption said something like: "the last person on Earth to hear about social networking". It reminded me of myself. I just heard the term within the last year. But now that myspace and other social networking sites have been in the news lately, I found the caption humorous.

I'm not a social historian. But, a simple look at how our culture has evolved will show the need for social networking. For example, when I drive my car up to the house, I push the garage door opener, drive the car inside, and then I close the garage door opener. Once inside my castle, I am safe and secure and I come out only to mow the grass or take out the garbage. Oh, I also walk the dog, which is the only way I've met anyone in my neighborhood.

Social networking is the modern way of gathering around the water cooler, finding people with similar interests, and having a conversation with them. We usually share something in common with these people and this link of commonality creates a bridge of trust which we can then walk across in order to create online relationships. I call this "the new neighborhood". We are no longer bound by the restrictions of time and place. Our social landscape is now the landscape without barriers. It is the landscape of the Internet. The list of friends within our network is more likely to include someone from another state or country, than the person across the street.

Faith Popcorn, the trend spotter, mentioned this back in 1997 in her book "Clicking". She called it clanning back then, before the phrase "social networking" was popular. But the urge to congregate with like-minded people is nothing new. We've been doing it ever since people could see and hear each other and found comfort in the fact that someone else was similar to us. We find comfort in the familiar. And, like I said, it provides a bridge into future relationships.

So...fad or trend? Neither. We've been doing it a long time already. We just found a new phrase for it and a new place to do it. Instead of leaning over the fence and saying "Howdy, neighbor", now we just type in "there?"

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