Thanks for your fantastic feedback. Great information about your co-workers behavior.

I agree with you that a lot of the discourse still takes a very “in the box” approach. I’m currently working on a post about education which I believe will really help shed light on this.

Your last question is a great one. The last several months i’ve really been focusing on exploring early adopters and the benefits of blogs, twitter, and the like as a social networking tool.

I have 600 some odd facebook friends. Many of which I made in college. I met these individuals through a multitude of channels. The river, salsa dancing, business clubs, lectures, the bars, take your pick.

The best part is, that because they were contacts made during College they are all over the place. Many returned home and for some that meant other countries. All come from a melting pot of professions and focuses. So, instead of the usual profession/interest based community I have contacts who are bio engineers, lit majors, political analysts, dance majors, artists, business majors – take your pick.

I can tap each of these individuals for expert advice in their field, get feedback from hundreds of varied perspectives, and share opportunities I come across literally globally. So, I think that, when acted upon, we enter the professional world with a giant Rolodex. The trick is deciding how to use it and how to make the transition from strictly social, to social/professional.

Accordingly, I think your post illustrates why that it very well. We grew up using mIRC, ICQ, AIM, MSN as a social tool not simply a communication tool. Thus, it is normal for us to use Facebook socially because it was a normal evolution.

After reading your post, I asked a few co-workers (older gen-yers (27-28)) about their Internet use and first encounters and the ones who did not socialized through “chat” (mIRC etc) do not use Facebook daily. Most if not all of them use it to watch pictures of their friends rather than communicating/socializing through Facebook.

Gen-x on the other hand do not socialize at all. I am following a lot of social media slash web 2.0 gurus or experts or evangelists and although they use and understand social media very well, their use seems very impersonal to me.

Another thing I would like to point out is that for us, the ones who grew up with mIRC ect, for the most part, just got out of school therefore we don’t have a professional network and life like the gen-xers who have been on the work force for 10+ years. That also factors in the equation.

What is interesting to me is that knowing all this… How will the young gen-yers like you and me and especially the gen-zers (?) will network through social media or the web in feneral.

As a designer of a new breed of “software toys” (“Clicktoy – The Meadow” specifically), I agree that interactive entertainment, social networks, and online worlds are indeed the kindergarten technologies for tomorrow’s generation.

Thanks for the comment. Not at all, and that’s the catch. There has been the perception and dialog that “e-mail is for old people” which typically is accompanied by the counter claim, that “Social Networks are for young kids” which grossly miss-represents the 27-X age demographic, and equally miss-portrays the 18-27 age group.

My references to that statement are more referencing the existing dialog which I don’t view as accurate. The data and inspiration for that statement however, is valid and something i’ve tried to clarify in this post.

At 27, you fall into the transition group. You’re reading blog posts, and thus I assume fairly tech savvy/reliant, so I’d wager that you do a lot of communication with friends over e-mail. Do you do e-mail forwards or have daily or bi-daily back and forth e-mail exchanges with friends in addition to your professional correspondences?

If you do, you’re engaged in several of the core behaviors which Social Networks streamline. On the flip side, the added exposure and public nature of social networks as well as cultural programming leave you extremely resistant to using the technology.

All: Please note that I have added the audio transcript for this post.