Your impact on your social network

Facebook, like no other entity of our time, has been advocating a more open and connected world since the get-go.

One way Facebook is attempting to build user involvement in this endeavour is by measuring a user’s impact on his or her network.

In this case, impact is measured as the Number of people the user brought to Facebook, which is the count of people the user invited over e-mail and who ended up joining using that specific e-mail address.

Now, being part of the generation we are part of and living the lives we lead in the real world today, chances are that either you have friends who are on Facebook or those who are not.

And if they are not on Facebook, they usually have a good reason for that. Either they are –
– not inclined towards social networking, or
– have a strong sense of privacy, or
– are too busy doing other things or
– are technologically challenged.

None of these are reasons that will be suddenly overcome basis an automated e-mail request asking them to join your Facebook network, especially since most e-mail users have started developing a keen blind spot to automated requests asking the recipient to register or join any site.

For the past many months, nay last couple of years, one’s Facebook network has primarily grown (read become more open and connected) by digging out your long-lost friends through Facebook profile search (if they exist) or by scanning friends lists of your common Facebook friends.

Hence, IMO checking to see if people have joined Facebook basis your invitation to their e-mail isn’t probably the best way of looking at creating connections.

A far more interesting way would be to find out which of your friends on Facebook got to know each other after they got to know you (can be measured as the number of people who added each other after being in your list for a certain minimum period of time, or by simply measuring how many users added friends by browsing and clicking through your friends list).

This could act as a surrogate to measure which new real life connections have made their way on to the Facebook social network.

And in a lot of ways, that could become the true measure of how open and connected we’re making the real and online worlds we live in.