Social networking sites are starting to move into our lives

Online social networks are starting to flourish, which not only changes how we manage our careers but also affects our social networks.

As the economy continues to slump, millions of of corporate managers are at stake, hastily joining online social networks to build their social capital. So the popularity of websites such as LinkedIn began to soar: A year ago the site was unknown. Most people think that this is just a distributed platform, only to work for people in the planning of the next career direction, search for relevant professional contacts. By contrast, Facebook attracts people who are looking for attractive websites, and those who are happy to socialize.

Today, LinkedIn's annual growth in the United States is close to 200%, with more than 35 million of its total membership, many of whom have previously served in the financial sector that has been hit badly. LinkedIn is just one of a group of managers who are affected by the recession. Germany's Xing has 7 million members, among them a very special Lehman Brothers alumni, the Meet, the Boss of the UK, which restricts membership to chief executives at the financial level, and the membership of the two sites is growing.

The surging popularity of online social networks is transforming the nature of business networks and has far-reaching implications for how people manage their careers. But it also heralds a profound change in the social network itself.

As such a huge influx of people into online social networks, the boundaries between social and business networks are increasingly blurred. A very important question is whether the values and codes of conduct that are applied in the virtual world conflict with the values and norms of the real world. Facebook's interface is embedded in the concept of "friends", but it is full of more and more self hype, professional artists and marketing entrepreneurs. What happens next, as the trend intensifies, and those who use Facebook exclusively as social networking users continue to pour in?

There are, of course, strong economic factors behind this trend. As sociologist Lin in his book Social capital 1, "individuals participate in interactive communication and social networks in order to reap the rewards of profit." "These benefits are based on information, influence, Social Credit and recognition." At the same time, the accumulation of social capital allows individuals to give priority to "resources" in social networks, thereby gaining a competitive advantage in the labour market.

For many people, the most unpleasant thing about a new "friend" is to ask for help immediately. Generally, it is more appropriate to enter the social network as a devotee rather than a solicitation, and to build a network of relationships incrementally, based on the principle of mutual benefit. In short, for online social networks, interpersonal interaction is based on trust and mutual support, and the dominant culture is sharing, not marketing.

Can you really think of this flock of people as friends? Anthropologists tell us that a person cannot maintain a stable social relationship with more than 150 people. It seems reasonable to maintain a loosely-knit career network with more than 150 people on LinkedIn, but it kills the rich social relationships that make up the basic structure of websites such as Facebook. Among Facebook's 175 million members, the "end of friends" phenomenon has grown.

It is safe to say that if the economic downturn persists, we will witness the further intensification of the conflict: one side of the conflict is the irrational instinct to build social relations and the other is a rational consideration of the construction of social capital for professional reasons. If so, the concept of "online friends" may have to undergo more tests. We'll ask ourselves that old question more often, "What do you want a friend for?"

Please participate in the dialogue and say what you think.

Author: Professor Soumitra Dutta is a professor of business and technology at Roland Berger at Insead, and Matthew Fraser is a senior researcher at the college.