People and Online Networks
Why do people join Online Business Networks. I think the answer to this in a word is - Work. Networks are great places to find opportunities, business partners, investors, jobs, clients and suppliers just as the Guilds once were.
So work is the driving force to join a network and, in a highly competitive global market with falling prices, this is not surprising.
Business is harder to come by, so businesses seek a way to extend the reach of the business geographically and demographically. These modern networks (unlike the Guilds) are are made up from all sorts of people, from all sorts of backgrounds, with all sorts of experiences.
I think this explains why over 1800 Clubs have formed on Ecademy with over 2 million messages to allow all these different groups to fracture into lots of little factions as typically happens in any physical community in the real world. Members can be part of the whole community and of many subsets simultaneously leading to a rich experience and opportunity.
Engagement with networks, like any other human endeavour, follows a lifecycle. Most people join with a specific purpose. Some satisfy that purpose (or not) and then move on to other networks, to find new contacts, to learn new things, to study new subjects or simply to try another approach to finding work and developing their businesses whilst others find reasons to remain and to grow within the network.
Some simply never get started. It takes time to settle into a community of any kind. It is just like when you move to a new town or city. You need to spend time finding the best shops, friends, clubs and societies, pubs and bars and social activity. So it is with networks but his investment of time is not available to everyone. Many people never actually discover what is inherent in their community be it physical or online. Some will lose patience and move on whilst others will remain but withdraw from engagement with the community.
There is also a question here of give and take. Getting output from the network is a function of what you put in. Some new members fail to recognise the need for this – for the development of relationships before trying to sell to their fellow members. Immediate selling on joining a network seldom works and the member will often leave disillusioned and saying “I didn’t get a return on my investment”. They miss the point – the key investment is not the subscription or joining fee, it is their time spent in developing relationships with other members.
What is interesting in Ecademy is how few people actually leave and how long they seem to stay. Now in our 8th year we have many, many members who have been with us since those early years when we just had a few hundred members and we were just getting started.
Why do they choose to stick around for so long? This is the most interesting thing to me personally and one where I have spent the most time reading, thinking, researching, interviewing and chatting with people all over the world.
What seems to be driving the desire to stay inside these networks alongside the need for work or business I mentioned earlier is friendship. I think Friendship might be the best definition of Social Capital I mentioned earlier.
For a detailed definition on Social Capital go the Bowling Alone website and also read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam.
Interestingly, Friendship is the same driver that has kept the Guilds (and their successors) growing stronger and stronger since medieval times. It follows for me that that Friendship is the basis of Trust and that Trust is the basis of trade.
So trade or work is an output of Friendship.
In other words Friendship is the basis of Trade.
We all like to do business with people we like and none of us are keen to do business with people we don’t like. This is why at Ecademy we are focused on discovering “A Friend in Every City” in the world so that each and every one of us wherever we go has someone to meet us, to greet us, to take care of us, to guide us, to connect us, to show us round the town and to help us trade with friends the world over. So wherever we are, we feel safe, we feel warm, we feel that wonderful thing we all know called Friendship.
This is why the title of our new book coming in January (for which this blog is a forerunner), will be “A Friend in Every City”.
Technorati - ecademy - blackstar - marketstar
So work is the driving force to join a network and, in a highly competitive global market with falling prices, this is not surprising.
Business is harder to come by, so businesses seek a way to extend the reach of the business geographically and demographically. These modern networks (unlike the Guilds) are are made up from all sorts of people, from all sorts of backgrounds, with all sorts of experiences.
I think this explains why over 1800 Clubs have formed on Ecademy with over 2 million messages to allow all these different groups to fracture into lots of little factions as typically happens in any physical community in the real world. Members can be part of the whole community and of many subsets simultaneously leading to a rich experience and opportunity.
Engagement with networks, like any other human endeavour, follows a lifecycle. Most people join with a specific purpose. Some satisfy that purpose (or not) and then move on to other networks, to find new contacts, to learn new things, to study new subjects or simply to try another approach to finding work and developing their businesses whilst others find reasons to remain and to grow within the network.
Some simply never get started. It takes time to settle into a community of any kind. It is just like when you move to a new town or city. You need to spend time finding the best shops, friends, clubs and societies, pubs and bars and social activity. So it is with networks but his investment of time is not available to everyone. Many people never actually discover what is inherent in their community be it physical or online. Some will lose patience and move on whilst others will remain but withdraw from engagement with the community.
There is also a question here of give and take. Getting output from the network is a function of what you put in. Some new members fail to recognise the need for this – for the development of relationships before trying to sell to their fellow members. Immediate selling on joining a network seldom works and the member will often leave disillusioned and saying “I didn’t get a return on my investment”. They miss the point – the key investment is not the subscription or joining fee, it is their time spent in developing relationships with other members.
What is interesting in Ecademy is how few people actually leave and how long they seem to stay. Now in our 8th year we have many, many members who have been with us since those early years when we just had a few hundred members and we were just getting started.
Why do they choose to stick around for so long? This is the most interesting thing to me personally and one where I have spent the most time reading, thinking, researching, interviewing and chatting with people all over the world.
What seems to be driving the desire to stay inside these networks alongside the need for work or business I mentioned earlier is friendship. I think Friendship might be the best definition of Social Capital I mentioned earlier.
For a detailed definition on Social Capital go the Bowling Alone website and also read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam.
Interestingly, Friendship is the same driver that has kept the Guilds (and their successors) growing stronger and stronger since medieval times. It follows for me that that Friendship is the basis of Trust and that Trust is the basis of trade.
So trade or work is an output of Friendship.
In other words Friendship is the basis of Trade.
We all like to do business with people we like and none of us are keen to do business with people we don’t like. This is why at Ecademy we are focused on discovering “A Friend in Every City” in the world so that each and every one of us wherever we go has someone to meet us, to greet us, to take care of us, to guide us, to connect us, to show us round the town and to help us trade with friends the world over. So wherever we are, we feel safe, we feel warm, we feel that wonderful thing we all know called Friendship.
This is why the title of our new book coming in January (for which this blog is a forerunner), will be “A Friend in Every City”.
Technorati - ecademy - blackstar - marketstar
posted by Ste Andreassen at 1:57 PM
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