Seth Godin hits the nail on the head.
Not like he doesn’t do it regularly enough on his blog . . . but he does it especially well in this video clip, while speaking to an audience of entrepreneurs at an American Express event:
What matters is, where are the real relationships? Now, I have real relationships with thousands of people around the world. There are people I’ve never met, who I could e-mail in New Zealand, who would let me sleep in their living room for three days if I was in town. Because we’ve done stuff for each other, because we’ve exchanged worthwhile ideas, because people have been connected by real things, not just a couple bits lining up. . . . Networking is always important when it’s real, and it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake. What the Internet has allowed is an enormous amount of fake networking to take place . . .
What translates is, are there people out there who I would go out of my way for, and who would go out of their way for me? That’s what you need to keep track of. And the way that you get there is by going out of your way for them, and by earning the privilege of one day having that connection be worthwhile.
(Watch the video here. Links to more video tidbits from this post on Seth’s blog.)
What Seth says here is absolutely right, and rightly explodes the old myth that equates friends “in real life” — i.e. those you’ve met face-to-face — with “real” friends. I ran into this myth back in January, when one of my co-panelists at a conference insisted on this distinction. As though there aren’t plenty of examples of people making friends, forming business partnerships, or even falling in love online.
Things online can be just as “real” as the things we can reach out and touch, depending on the context — the human context, not the technological context.
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(Thanks to Chris Brogan for the encouragement to watch these video clips. He’s right — they’re well worth the time.)
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Tim – point well made speaking of e-friends. IMHO the distinction between e-friends and physical friends, while important, is not as critical as the test of the relationship. Will this person go out of their way to be helpful ? How far ? But both of those go back to the reciprocal over time. The whole artificial nurturing of “networks” is, at least to me, very un-appealing. Granted knowing somebody is always a good start and friendly relations is better than cold-calling.
Dave — Thanks for this. I actually think that the distinction between e-friends and physical friends sometimes ISN’T important, at all, depending on the answers to the questions that you and Seth articulate.
If a guy’s willing to let me sleep on his couch based on a relationship formed online, that’s a real friend. If a woman is willing to hire me based on a relationship formed online, that’s a genuine professional connection.
I don’t think this is entirely new: Benjamin Franklin carried on an active correspondence with scientists of Europe for decades before meeting them in person. Many writers have been hired sight unseen in the past based on their body of work in print. But the new tools ease the process, eh?
Bingo. We old rock climbers talk about somebody we’d let hold the other end of the rope. A very serious test when you understand the implications.
“And the way that you get there is by going out of your way for them”
Amen. The best way to network, to build strong relations, is to go above and beyond what is expected of you.