misc
- June 15, 2008
How i hooked up with Barack Obama
Now i have received so many questions regarding “how i know Barack Obama” that i feel it’s time to write something about it here before i drown in all these mails…
The short story is that i read an article somewhere (sorry i can’t remember the link) that Senator Obama was an “open networker” on sites like linkedin etc. And since his email address where in the article i decided to give it a try. And a couple of days later he accepted my request to connect. (Btw. i have no illusions what so ever that he personally klicks and accepts the thousands of request to connect that he receives!)
An open networker basically is someone who accepts (almost) all requests to connect on social networks, this means they try to take full advantage of “Metcalfe’s law” but applied to social networks.
Metcalfe’s law states: “that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n²).” In plain English this means that the value of your network increases more and more for each new connection you have.
And i totally agree that in business oriented social networks like linkedin there is power in numbers to how many you are connected to. This way you maximise your exposure to others and increase the chance that you can get introduced to someone you need to get in contact with. So i’m an open networker there to with almost 1000 connections, mainly with headhunters and other peers in the Internet industry.
Business oriented social networks is one thing, but purely personal networks like facebook and others i have another strategy. There i only link to people who i have had a (not too negative) relation to. The difference here is that information here, pictures, who i know and what i do is a much more private thing affecting me directly and my family. Not to mention friends and colleages who i connect to and meet in real life. My life rubs off onto theirs and i don’t want a complete stranger to be able to rub it in their face.
So please hook up with me on linkedin with my email chris@arnold.se and if you need to link with Senator Obama please feel free to send me a request and as long as it isn’t rude or spammy i will pass it on to him. But if you would like the same on facebook make shure to tell me why i should open up myself towards you. The same goes for senator Obama! (But in relaity i guess i would be so flattened that ill accept right away and send him a message asking for a postal address so i could send a hard copy of my familly album…)
