Two days until BarCamp Vancouver and I'm about where I started with my proposed session on social software for introverts: I "only" have questions. The question I can now add to the list is "How do introverts use social (networking) software to sustain a relationship and mutually benefit both/all parties involved?" (I put the word "networking" in brackets because we seem to have forgotten the connection element of sites these days and instead focus on sharing. There's nothing at all wrong with that: through sharing comes relationships; I'm just pointing it out is all.) Those questions arise from two articles on networking, in the sense we know it now meaning meeting and connecting with people in a physical space, often involving the ritual exchanging of business cards. The articles come from Penelope Trunk and Elisa Camahort, especially the latter that notes the importance of sustained relationships.
Now, I don't want to give to impression that I read why Jenny Spadafora thinks that social software is good for introverts before I wrote the above paragraph, so you'll excuse me if I hadn't considered it as much as I have 7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making Us Miserable, which I read a couple weeks ago thanks to Joey's pointer. First a quote from Jenny's article:
As a participant on a social site, I set the risk level. Whether or not I connect my various online haunts is my choice. I can be as open and transparent as possible, or I can be pseudonymous or anonymous. If you bug me, I can just ban you — and never get another message, see another photo, or notice another of your bookmarked links again. And you can do the same.
That strikes me as something that's bad for introverts. As I explained in my article, if social software is going to be truly successful for introverts, it must encourage the physical meeting up of that software's participants. Low-threshold actions like adding someone to a contact list, have the potential to give us introverts the feeling of connecting with someone but in fact risk enabling hiding behind our computer. Reasons #1 and #2 of why we (in general, I assume, not just introverts) are miserable are that we don't have annoying strangers and annoying friends in our lives. Because we can choose who are friends are and who aren't, maybe we risk cutting ourselves off from richer—not necessarily better, but more interesting—experiences that we can turn into something, whether it's a creative work or just something positive like an insight into the human condition instead of just always finding what we want without stumbling onto the awful and the beautiful.
But again, I'm interested in the more simple aspect of connecting with people in a more meaningful and sustained way than "friending" them. Jenny writes about people whose experiences she's read about, and comments that I realize that I don’t really know these people. Yet that statement feels like a like lie. The truth is, I haven’t met any of them, but I’ve been following them on the web for years. Connecting online counts. It matters to me, sometimes I’m surprised by how much. Connecting online, though it seemed great for the first 6 years I've done it through my weblog, and really was, is not enough. I want social software to make me less of an introvert and a more active participant in my community, and to grow what I consider my community into areas I'd never thought I could imagine possible.
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