Big Topic #2: Create Meaningful Relationships
Isolation is unsustainable. Being connected to others, learning from and sharing with them, is crucial to our personal and collective success. The evolving “social web” phenomenon has made these interactions easier. The growing number of online tools makes connecting to others around the world (even those we don’t know) effortless and instantaneous. This is not merely a technological shift: The development has made (maybe involuntarily so) a lot of people more accessible. It’s becoming remarkably easy to reach and get replies (often personal) from celebrities, corporations, and politicians.
As connecting simplifies, its value as a skill decreases. Just having a contact isn’t worth much anymore. The skill that is remerging and becoming more valuable is knowing how to stay connected and fostering meaningful relationships. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar once famously postulated that humans are incapable of having “stable” relationships with more than 150 people. Whether the number is accurate or not, it’s impossible to maintain “stable” social relationships with all our Facebook friends and Twitter followers, with people increasingly racking up 1000’s of contacts.
At Sandbox, we are convinced that creating meaningful relationships will be one of the key factors of success in the coming years (have you noticed the Facebook “reconnect” feature?). Just “adding” people is not enough – you have to engage with them, start real conversations, and invest time into the relationship. This holds true whether you’re an individual or a company. Staying connected and engaging your supporters takes more time and energy than just inflating contact lists for status. In a world where connecting to others is effortless, the connections value is nothing more than a statistic. Finding ways to maintain meaningful relationships while increasing number of contacts will be a focus over the next years.
This is one of the six big topics we feel will be important in 2010 and beyond. Have a look at the others and let us know what you think!
