Kegstands and Beer Bongs

Some rights reserved by zachflanders

Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn says to PCMag that his application is about the "professional social graph."A place where people can network within the context of their professional objectives, look for a job, build relationships and share knowledge and credentials within their industry, as opposed to Facebook where you share fun things with friends.

The big difference between the two apps is kegstands. By this I mean that the fun snapshots one might share on a social site like Facebook could, and as recent collage graduates can attest, will significantly impugn your credibility when you are looking for a job. I think a beer bong is a little more incriminating than a keg stand, but that's just me.

While the innocuous material you share with friends can be a problem, at least it is one you have some control over. The flip side of the social stream equation, the one in which you are using Facebook to nurture relationships around your business is more problematic. Firstly you are liable to be overwhelmed by an avalanche of lightweight ephemera from your myriad connections. The average Facebook user generates 90 pieces of media each month. Staying off Facebook is about the only way to avoid this deluge but that may not be an option. In my own network, a third of my Facebook contacts are professional associates so I cannot ignore them or their media. I have the same mixture of friends and associates in my LinkedIn account and my various address books across the web. Trying to strike the right balance between the boozy adventures that make me interesting and the updates to my portfolio that make me credible is tough. Trying to filter the content of my social network connections to understand how they are relevant to my business is darn near impossible.

To make sense of all this and start really leveraging my social networks for business, I need to first bring all my contacts and their media streams together. Then I must filter, sort and prioritize the content for relevance and closeness to my business objectives. If I can do this then business development becomes about gathering benefit from existing assets and getting business while I get business done. A much more manageable and meaningful proposition for most small business owners.

Sabin