Basically the moment I started reading the book “Connected” by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler the same quote kept popping into my mind: “Is not what you know, but who you know.” The quote completely relates to the Stanley’s Milgram “six degree of separation” experiment as well as the authors (Christakis and Fowlers) “Three Degrees of Influence Rule.” Nowadays with social networks is even easier to stay in touch with the people we meet throughout our life’s, and at the same time is easier to find new people that may help us in a way or another.
“In online networks, moreover, we not only manage our direct relationship to all these people; we also monitor all of their relationships with one another to a much greater degree than we would in the offline world.”
Of course who we are and what we know also influences where we get into places in our life’s, but the people we know have a bigger influence than we think in what we end up doing in our life. The book doesn’t talk about one social network: LinkedIn. The business oriented social network site says it serves 3 main purposes. First re-connect with old and/or current colleagues and classmates. Second, it will power your career by discovering inside connections when looking for a job or new business opportunities. And third, it helps you get answers from experts of the industry that are part of the network. In LinkedIn profiles people post their previous and/or current professional experience. Also, the add information regarding about what they know to do in their areas of expertise. In relation to the six degree of separation rule I think it can be completely applied to this particular social network. You can see all the connections from your connections and so on. Then the website also informs of you how many of the same connections you have with a person you are not connected. The third degree of influence rule also will make sense to this website. I mean whoever affects you in your career probably would not be more than three degrees of separation of you. Anyone from a larger distance from you would probably not be able to affect your professional career for the simple reason that they would not know enough of your professional skills and/or ethics to vouch in your favor for you to move forward on your career.
LinkedIn is also the perfect example to show the truth behind the quote: “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” Obviously whatever posts in your profile influences people wanting to connect with you and be willing to help you in any way in your professional career. At the same time the basic purpose of the website is to get that help from the people you know. Without the social network it would be so difficult to stay up-to-date to every single person that has or has the power to influence your career. It also opens a new form of connecting with people interested in the same professional areas as you. LinkedIn maintains and increases your network, therefore what you know forms your network but who you know opens the actual doors. Obviously no matter whom you know if you just don’t know anything you can only keep the lie for so long, but that’s a whole different question/blog.
Even with social networks the same basic rules apply into how we are connected. The six degree of separation rule and the third degree influence rule still work about the same in every person. But the social networks revolutionize the way we are connected to each other in the sense that it makes that connection prevail. There are always people in our life’s that after we meet we never see each other again, before Facebook and/or email that more than likely meant you’ll never know about that person again. And if one day you wonder if that person would be able to help you, your options will be limited on getting in touch with that person ever. Today thanks to social networks and all the ways of communication the internet has introduced to society is easier to humans to maintain all those connections and just pull them out of their ‘friends’ if they ever have the need. I guess the authors said it best, “Our interactions, fostered and supported by new technologies, but existing even without them, create new social phenomena that transcend individual experience by enriching and enlarging it, and that has significant implications for the collective good.”
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