People often wonder what value does social networking truly provide to them. Sure we can all sit around on Facebook and play flash games, or follow every celebrity through Twitter, but does that truly improve our knowledge and lives substantially? Now don’t get me wrong here I am more than guilty of playing silly games and following celebrities, but there are things with more impact possible on social media.
A good example of this is keeping up with industry sector trends, especially important in the endpoint protection space. For example, I follow a number of competing vendors in the threat management product space on Facebook. It is interesting to see that they are all covering each others moves within hours. For example, Sophos detects a new virus type. Within the day Trend and McAfee will have a similar story on the threat and what they have done about it. Symantec are not quite as regular, but they do eventually cover the same topics. This is good for me from a professional point of view as I am not likely to visit each vendors sites/blogs to achieve the same result.
The sharing of ideas with peers is another great facet of Social Networking for the geek. I have been working through a number of challenging topics at work of late and have had to resort to the internet for answers. Google was not my friend on this occasion only throwing up answers that were not relevant or no longer actually there! I had to resort to the forum. The issue was indeed not a straight forward fix. Further the information in the error did not indicate that the problem was as severe as it potentially was. Suffice to say that I am glad I fixed the issue before a client was impacted.
Social networking also allows me to reconnect with colleagues from a bygone era. Recently I have reconnected with old colleagues from the KAZ and WA Newspapers days. Many of these people I have completely lost touch with previously during moves interstate and the like. Their opinions though still carry significant weight, so it is good to get back in touch.
I guess that is pretty much it. Just a quick brain storm of a blog today.
P.S. If you want to socially network with me you can find my links under “Where Else You Can Find Me” in the sidebar on SCHWOIT. Sorry to anyone on SCHWOIT (Republished).
