This past week I was attending a demo at work of a a Social Product and how it might be applied in the workplace. Other than the person giving the demo and myself, I will describe the demographics of the rest of the group as "perfectly comfortable with Outlook and Mobile Outlook clients". I was not surprised when one attendee upon seeing a conversation/interaction in this product commented, "Oh, I would do instead of sending you and e-mail? It's perfectly normal for us to compare new things to something we already understand, but the comment misses the true power of Social Networks -- The undiscovered social collaboration with someone that you would not know to "send an e-mail".
A brief personal story to illustrate my point. I registered for Twitter about the same time as I was watching a Nightline episode on Tony Hsieh of Zappos. I was curious so the next day I followed him. He followed me back. A few days later, another Zappos twitter feed was following me. I thought it was interesting but not much beyond that. About this same time, I was shopping for some soccer spikes for my daughter. She has an issue with her feet that makes it difficult to find the correct shoes. I remembered the Nightline episode and called Zappos. It turned out they were not able to help me, but the customer experience was quite satisfying. I tweeted something very similar to that last sentence and forgot all about it.
About two days later, I got three Direct Messages on Twitter from the second Zappos account about three other possible organizations/business that might help me find soccer spikes for my daughter. I called each of them. While none of them were able to help me find spikes, the whole experience forever changed my thoughts about the power Social Networks.
Have you and those around you made this mindset shift? if not, perhaps you have yet to discover "those around you".
