Social media allows us to make many connections but are they meaningful ones?
"Internet splat map" by jurvetson on Flickr. Creative Commons 2.0 By Attribution
From personal experience, more than ever before we can make new social connections and befriend people over a wide range of distance, culture and beliefs. I now know people in most capital cities of Australia, and in a number of regional cities, too.
The recent inaugural Digital Citizens event was chock full of social media inhabitants (enough for a swarm on Foursquare). Some were Social Media Douchebags, most were not. Given that while I was familiar with many of the attendees but only casually so, I took the opportunity to sit back and watch social networks manifest in the flesh. Maybe it’s my training as a sociologist, but I love observing people when they don’t think they’re being observed (not as creepy as it sounds – well, just a little bit creepy, but you know you love it). I was curious about how deep some of these networks really were, and the results were interesting.
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