Carolyn Jack

Editor and CEO, Geniocity.com
A project of The Genius Group LLC

Good social networking = your past + your future

I’m beginning to think that the best part of outreach tools such as Facebook and LinkedIn is not their potential for helping you develop relationships with new people, but the nearly miraculous ability they give you to find the old ones.

Over the last few months, I’ve been friended by all kinds of people I haven’t seen, talked to or heard anything about in nearly 30 years. I’ve found out what they do now and who they married; we’ve apologized for old hurts and/or reaffirmed our affection, traded ideas and hard-earned wisdom.

College friends, long-ago office pals – whatever our original connections were, these people feel like the best possible contacts I could have, because we share history and caring that came about through spending time face to face and experiencing life together.

That kind of bond really can’t be created virtually with strangers, no matter how many people we know in common. Yes, it will probably be handy for me to collect a large number of online nominal acquaintances  who could serve as information resources and be part of a broader market for what I sell. But frankly, I’d rather seek advice from people I actually know and trust.

What matters most to me about rediscovering old friends has to do with business only indirectly, anyway. I’ve found that it’s satisfying and somehow reassuring to reconnect with them now that I know a lot more about the world and people than I did at 20, 25 or 30 – time has somehow allowed us to understand each other better, to see why we were as we were then, to forgive or appreciate or sympathize more deeply than we could have earlier.

When we message each other from hundreds of miles away, we don’t just add another business card to the Rolodex. We join hands. 

I feel safer and more confident, richer, with them back in my life. If that helps my business, it will be because it helps me.