Social networks will be like air

I was watching a presentation on YouTube by Charlene Li (author of Groundswell) at Google and was struck by this statement she made about social networks. At first blush it sounds terribly hyperbolic. But she went on to elaborate on what she meant by it.

And it made a lot of sense.

I don’t think she was referring to social networks as they exist today: facebook, myspace or twitter. I think what she was referring to was the impact of social networks, the information transacted in them or on other sites linked to them or probably anywhere on the internet on our behavior. An easy example is one of Amazon showing us not only the highest ranked reviews for a book but also what our friends thought about the book. Or Yelp alerting me my friends hated a restaurant I am about to enter.

I can easily see how this lends itself to suggesting learning experiences within the enterprise based on what my colleagues, who have interests or aspirations similar to me, enjoyed participating in.

p.s. What also blew my mind was that Charlene said all this sometime around March 2008!