Social Networking - benefits?

Are there any benefits or is it just crap?

It depends on how you are doing it - and what you finally want to achieve.

Connecting to thousands of people makes no sense when you don't interact with them. So the word networking means what it is "net"+"working" - establishing an interaction to create a win-win relationship.

Where we end up in the next word "relationship": a relationship does not exist as long as you exchange only email-addresses. There needs more to be done. A relationship needs to be created by interaction, by understanding the other ones needs. Then you can deliver what he wants from you or vice versa. In a closed network, where everybody knows everybody this has already happened. But are they open for new opportunities? Not really. So we finally end up in connecting to strangers - either via references or by directly connecting to them. Both needs again: interaction, interaction, interaction.

And then the benefits come, new opportunities, a new job.

References: this does not mean you can trust this new contact. You have to find this out by again interacting.

Conclusion: there are a lot of benefits you get due to networking, but you have to make this right. And interaction is the final keyword. Otherwise the biggest network will not be of any help for you - and also no benefits.

Notes Solutions Ltd: Who are we?

Notes Solutions Ltd was founded in 2008, by Geoff Poole, founder of Tech Soft Consultancy Services Ltd, and Michael Haschek, founder of the Seamless Group, to deliver solutions for the Social Networking community.

Michael Haschek is very active in networking and realised there were some open gaps between some environments, like Lotus Notes, and Social Networking sites.

Geoff Poole is an experienced Lotus Notes/Domino developer, with a wealth of technical knowledge and experience.

From this came a desire to fill those gaps, so Michael and Geoff started a collaboration by founding Notes Solutions Ltd to distributing products in this area worldwide.

The first product released by Notes Solutions Ltd was ViCo for Lotus Notes to address the need for better management of contacts spanning across many social network sites.