The Social Networks of Social Networkers

On Saturday we attended the BBC Backstage Bash....great party, kudos to Ian Forrester and team who organised it, and the Bar Cuban staff for manning the vittles in the face of the ravening horde.

But the BBCBB was also interesting as it was an event to tie together a number of the London groups of people (aka social networks) doing Social Networking / Web 2.0 / Mobile2.0 / etc 2.0 stuff into one place at one time - was this the first London Social Media MetaNet?.

Groups participating were:

Swedish Beers
London Girl Geekdinners
Geekdinners
London Perlmongers
London Webstandards Group
London Ruby user group (didn't realise they called themselves LRUG on the night......darn)
Open rights group
London 2.0
Mobile Monday
LondonSEO

I also met people I had seen from other Social Network networks such as NMK and Beers and Innovations, and I even saw Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher from TechCrunchUK too (we must stop meeting like this guys, people will talk...). There are a number of other groups I know of who need to get dragged in such as the Drupal User Group (DrUG?) and the London Social Media Club. (Whaddaya mean you’re not doing your site in Drupal?)

These MetaNets interest me a lot, allow me to delve (briefly) into Social Networking theory. Most human social nets are overlapping small world networks. (essentially networks where many of the nodes are interconnected - aka know each other - mostly local with a few long distance links so you can skip continents etc). However, bigger Social MetaNets are in fact a different type - scale free networks - where a few nodes are extremely well connected and most nodes have little contact with each other. In many areas human society seems to work this way, Human “power networkers” are these sort of meganodes – fashions, ideas (and diseases) are broadcast by these highly connected people. If you want to get ahead, get noded.

These types of networks tend to reinforce the connected, leading to "hit based" dynamics.

The Internet is just such a net, where a few major nodes get many links – and attract more because they have many already (until they get too many and performance suffers etc etc of course…). In theory these are the MegaNodes in the ‘Net. Does this mean that these are the “best” nodes in the space? If you think yes, then that’s essentially how Google works so you are one happy bunny. If you think not, then you have proved the need for new Search approaches.

Even the supposedly democratic Blogosphere is such a major “hit based” system (just graph the links to the top 100 nodes on technorati for example). In theory it should be moderated by user connections, as this argument from Keith Teare at Edgeio articulates, and this by Fred Wilson strangulates with De-Portalization (should be deportalized for a word like that!).

(Grumpy aside re the Scale Free Blogosphere – the whole point of blogging is that it allows the smaller nodes to get to know each other by leaving comments – ie to form small world networks from the scale free, “hit based” one - so megabloggers who turn off commenting are basically playing a “you make me a meganode” game. In game theory this is what is called “cheating” . We should boycott them forthwith!! They may as well just have websites to broadcast from, they are not bloggers even though they have blogsites.)

Now, knowing all that, I am actually a fairly cr*p "Networker".....I prefer to chat to fewer people in more depth rather than "work a room". Seems like I am not the only one, this post from Fredd Kambo (which I picked up from another SN aficionado, Hugh MacLeod's website here). Judging by the comments on both sites I am Not Alone. To repeat what Fredd wrote:

I don't bother "networking" anymore, instead, I try to build relationships with people I find interesting, and who I think are doing interesting things. And I make it my mission to help them in any way I can to achieve their mission. I find this much more satisfying, much more honorable, and much more fun. And this is the cool thing about people....When you help them out in this way, they help you out. Not because it's a tit for tat deal, but because both parties are engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship that extends beyond the next favor.

I actually suspect this is also networking, and it probably is a "High Quality" rather than "High Volume" approach. Many networked endeavours seem to have some form of tradeoff between volume and value of connections. From my point of view this Social Networking space is moving so fast that to try to keep up I need to have good, high quality conversations with people who also know what is going on. I suspect if one was in a field where the aim was much more limited, or more defined, then simple interactions along the lines of "hi, I am a node/player/whatever - have a business card" are sufficient.

Speed Dating comes to mind here....traditionally, Romance is (was?) a very High Quality interaction, whereas Speed Dating seems to be trying to move it to the other extreme - or is it that it is the optimal First Scan method - go high volume then home in on the high quality on a second cut. Disclaimer - have never done speed dating, so have not a clue about the relative efficiency of the process vis a vis more traditional approaches - but I do know a number of people (mainly men) who believe "it is all a numbers game" - I suspect it all depends what you want "it" to be.

Actually, this may not be an issue in this particular MetaNet – Playas like lapdances, Geeks prefer laptops .

(In fact Sarah Blow of GirlGeekdinner fame told me she started the whole GGD thing because of the paucity of women in the space. This is a subject for another time, but it is an interesting – and worrying – point)

And here does seem to be a danger in getting too many Social Networkers in one space, as this ding dong over Le Web 3 at TechCrunchUK seems to show - the antisocial network effect? (Postscript...I had to change the link after Sam Sethi's last post was pulled).

But I digress….the point is, can we build a Cool Stuff 2.0 small world MetaNet in London (ie where everyone is fairly well connected), and if so what is the best way to do this. Part of the answer is online, but part of it is in real time – Silicon Valley is small, there are only a few places to hang out and meet each other. London is huge, we need to get some MetaNet nodes agreed. Or do we club together and buy an Island on Second Life to hang out in?

And of course one cannot forget the facilitating role of beer in social networking, as I have blogged about on Broadstuff before....or even Cake (big thanks to the Trading Places guys)