Social networking: is it actually social?

By Todd Stadler · Tuesday, February 12, 2008 8:12am

Julia and I attended Ignite Portland 2 last week. Ignite is a recurring event that, while seemingly marketed to a fairly elite tech crowd, nonetheless aims to be a community-building exercise centered around people sharing their passions (in five minutes or less). With time built in for social networking.

And I'm all for that. It wasn't even a year ago that I felt all alone in my corner of the Portland tech world. After all, I'm the lone Web guy for a publisher with 30 employees — about the only person in my company with a strong interest in the Internet qua Internet (occasionally I'll try to talk shop with our IT contractor, but he only comes in once a week). I'm largely self-trained, and I've never been much of a networker, so I didn't know anybody else out there doing what I was doing, caring about what I cared about.

Sure, I'd worked at Intel as a hardware designer for several years, but somehow that didn't count. For one thing, hardware designers inhabit a rather different world from the people-centered world of the Internet ("User interface? Here's your user interface: 0101010010010110!"). Furthermore, I was notably bereft of contacts within the world of Web movers — whenever someone asked if I wanted to do a freelance job and I declined, I had nobody to recommend as an alternative.

About the only things that passed for community were a handful of choice RSS feeds dealing with Web topics and whatever resources that day's Google searches revealed. (This is where your heart breaks.)

And then, somehow, I found myself discovering Portland's nascent online tech community.

I believe it all started with Twitter. Somehow I heard about it and, like most people, decided it was stupid. Then I tried it anyhow, and got hooked enough that just typing the word in this blog entry reminded me to start up my Twitter client.

Anyhow, I started by following my friends on Twitter. And then, for kicks, followed the people they made references to. And the people they referenced, and so on. Oddly, this didn't lead so much to an ever-expanding circle of friends of friends of friends, but rather a fairly tight-knit, self-referencing circle of what seemed to be key players in the Portland tech scene (and by "tech", I probably mean "Web", because like I mentioned before, hardware doesn't count, and the only software that counts these days seems to be Web software).

Anyhow, within a few weeks, I was listening in on the conversations of people who work for companies that are all about the Internet — not merely tech-savvy people like myself(?), but people who lived this stuff.

But as if it weren't enough to eavesdrop on people's voluntary offerings on what they're doing at any given minute, the tech community announced it was throwing a get-together. Actually, it announced tons of them at various levels, but one in particular seemed to consume all the oxygen, since it wasn't focused so much on technology as social activity. That was the first Ignite Portland.

I had a great time at that first one, and the most recent one as well. But as usual, ten paragraphs in, here is where I get to my point: it's one thing to "talk" to people online, and quite another to talk to them in person.

This all became clear to me at Ignite Portland, where I found I recognized several people just from their icons on Twitter. "Hey, I know that person!"

Of course, the first sign that I didn't really know that person was that I wasn't sure what her real name was. I remember telling my wife (who attended Ignite 2 with me, though her only Twitter interfacing is through me), "Well, on Twitter she's verso, but she also goes by Banana Lee Fishbones. ... I can't remember her actual name, though." Other people would introduce themselves to me like this: "I'm Jason. Jason Grigsby. ... You know, grigs."

In fact, it was this disconnect between online social activity and such activity in meatspace that was frustrating. Through online activity, you can learn what city or neighborhood a person lives in, if he's married or has kids, what he does for a living, and what his hobbies are. All before you ever talk to him in real life.

And in fact, knowing all that stuff can actually make it harder to talk to him in real life. I know, I've tried:

Me: Hey, you're Jim, right?

Jim: ... Maybe ...

Me: Yeah, I recognized you from your icon. You live in Tigard, right?

Jim: Um ... yeah ...

Me: How's your wife? Surgery go okay?

Jim: Get away from me! Stalker!

Okay, maybe not quite like that, but it's still awkward to introduce yourself to someone you've never met, only to have them nod their head to say "yes, I know all that already."

So how best to deal with this issue, which we surely will face more and more in the future? I guess people like me who are mildly shy could stop using online social tools, which only give us a false sense of hope that we know how to deal with strangers.

But I'd like to think that a better solution would be to just stop meeting people in real life. That way, we don't judge people by their looks or their ability to make smalltalk, but merely on their ability to type.