When talking about personal branding, there are a some experts that says that you can be defined/described just by looking at the network you have. The studies in the field are mostly conducted on off-line social networks, but of course this applies also for on-line communities (or even more) such as Facebook, Xing, MySpace etc.
The Swedish business newspaper E24.se has an article today about a recent study at Berkley in California, which shows that more universities students prefers Facebook in front of MySpace, which is more populated by persons starting to work right after high-school.
Even BBC covered this story in this article.
5 Comments on “Are you defined by your network?”
Ola, if you’re interested in Personal Branding, my blog is dedicated to the subject. I’m happy you posted about it.
http://www.personalbrandingblog.com
The really interesting thing is that a lot of people assume sites like facebook and myspace are are for Gen-Yers only. That’s simply not true: 30- and 40-somethings have really taken to social networking, as well as providing the mainstay for business networking sites like LinkedIn.
However you build your network, though, it has to be able to get you in touch with the right people at the right time, and it has to consist of people who know, like and trust you. A lot of networkers these days seem to aim for quantity of connections rather than quality: those casual connections won’t get you the right introductions when it counts, because they won’t know you well enough to champion you.
Rob:
I can´t agree more to your comments on the ”quantity networkers”. At some point a person with to many connections at for example LinkedIn, will be looked upon as a random connection rather than a trusted one.
For me anyway, I start to think about what is the real path of connection for this person. In the extreme case the ”quantity networker” is connected to the whole world (eg. all the network members), which just is not trustworthy. By being to much of a networker, it can actually work against you.
As we have discussed earlier here in the blog, trustworthiness is one of the key elements of a brand.
I personally believe that the networks that you are associated with do define to you to a certain extent, as it would become blatant as to the circle you are associated with or who you are better received by. This however does depend on the personal brand you are promoting on these network sites, if one is promoting a personal brand that is accessible to a wide range of people these networking sites can be seen as quite useful. If utilised in the right way these networking sites can effectively help to promote a broad personal brand that can be seen as effective in a number of fields.
Therefore to say that you can be defined by your network on these sites I feel is inaccurate it is much more accurate to say that depending on the personal brand you are promoting whether or not these sites or networks can define you. If one has a broad accessible personal brand that is effectively received by a wide range of people these sites are ideal for locking into the different networks available to you. Therefore if used correctly it would be virtually impossible to confine your personal brand to such short restrictions.
I have to agree with juniorb. It is true that ”quantity networkers” try to build a wide range of networks on all kinds of websites but that is probably because they aim for popularity rather than narrowing their network to only a specific set of people, therefore quality over quantity does not apply to everyone. On Myspace or any other networking site you find profiles of celebrities that have over a thousand friends, who they’ve never really talked to and you find ”all kinds” of people on their friends list.