We’ve all been there. You receive a connection request on Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, or another social network from someone you met at a networking event or conference. You chatted for a few minutes, didn’t have any immediate reason to be in touch, but exchanged business cards. Now she wants to connect to you on a social network. You’re conflicted: yes, you’re contacts, but do you want to be connected?
Some people try to reconcile this dilemma by simply using different networks for different purposes, e.g. Facebook for personal contacts and LinkedIn for business contacts. While a noble attempt at making order out of chaos, multiple personality disorder is not sustainable: in the 2.0 world, we have a single persona. Eventually, your personal and professional selves will overlap so much that you will concede and become one with yourself again.
So, until recently, when you received an invitation to connect, you chose to accept or not to accept. It was fairly simple, but the lack of a common set of objective “relationship” definitions made many of us queasy. So, most social networks added shades of gray: they provide us with the opportunity to define our relationships. For example, on Plaxo, you can be “business contacts,” “family” or “friends.” LinkedIn and Facebook offer even more relationship choices. This added dimension is a bit of a relief, but actually has created a more complex challenge: the Social Networkers’ Dilemma.
Let’s take the situation in which someone you met though work invites you as a “friend” on Plaxo. You don’t feel comfortable accepting the invitation because you don’t consider this person to be a “friend”: you’ve never shared a meal together, you’ve never been to his house–you don’t even know if he’s married or single. But you think: will downgrading the acceptance to a relationship of “business contacts” be an insult?
What you don’t know–what you don’t see–is that this guy only invited you as a “friend” because HE didn’t want to insult YOU by inviting you as a “business contact.” And so we have the Social Networker’s Dilemma.
The truth is that neither of you feel the other one is a “friend” but think that you should connect as “friends” because you don’t want to hurt the other’s feelings or embarrass yourself. In the Social Networker’s Dilemma, both participants are trying to be deferential and polite, but would really both fare better from honesty.
- If you decline the relationship or ignore the invitation (which is, in effect, declining the relationship), you limit the size, scope and potential of your social network as well as the other person’s network by not connecting with one another.
- If you accept the invitation as proposed, you expand your social network’s size, but actually dilute the strength of your social network by weakening the underpinnings of trust of the network.
- If you downgrade the relationship to reflect your true relationship, you both get what you really want: a valuable, expanded and true social network.
Why do we find ourselves in this dilemma? This dilemma happens because both parties are playing a 2.0 game by 1.0 rules. Both parties are putting the social facades of politeness and deference first. However, social networking is part of the 2.0 world–a world governed by openness, transparency and truth. Practicing 2.0 values will put you–and your contacts–in the best scenario in this game of retrobuilding and social digitization.
