Can You Relate?

“Compared with other forms of human interaction, online social networking is really not all that social.

“People visit each other's MySpace pages and Facebook profiles at various hours of the day, posting messages and sending e-mail back and forth across the digital void. It's like an endless party where everybody shows up at a different time and slaps a yellow Post-it note on the refrigerator.

“Now a new wave of Silicon Valley companies is bringing live socializing back into a medium that has, in the parlance of the technologists, grown overly asynchronous.

“Vivaty, a start-up based in Menlo Park, Calif. , is creating 3-D virtual chat rooms that people can add to the Web pages and social networking profiles on the sites where they spend most of their Internet time…

“With videogame-like precision, they can then navigate that virtual space, which may feature their Facebook photos hanging from the walls and a YouTube video playing on a widescreen TV. Up to 15 others can choose avatars and enter the same room at the same time for text-based live socializing…

“Similar online services like Second Life and games like World of Warcraft have existed for years. But they are not accessible through a Web browser. Instead they require users to install large and cumbersome programs and have plenty of Internet bandwidth for a satisfyingly immediate experience…

“The entrepreneurs and investors behind… ‘live Web’ companies say that the intermittent socializing on most Web sites ignores the primal human instinct that once drove people to the town square and now brings them into real-world social groups to watch the Super Bowl or the latest episode of ‘Battlestar Galactica.’

“‘A lot of basic human communication needs have been lost in this age of siloed, one-to-one communications,’ said Roelof Botha, a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. ‘At the end of the day, we are a social species.’ …

“[Keith] McCurdy from Vivaty said he did not expect these live services to travel far across the generational divide. The younger video-game generation ‘has more craving for contact,’ he said. ‘They are using their computers for emotional experiences, and a video-game experience is more emotional than looking at a blue and white Facebook page’.”

(“Online Chat, As Inspired By Real Chat.” Brad Stone. The New York Times. March 31, 2008. pg. 1)

TOUCH IS A KEY SENSE in managing strategically. When we are in touch with others, we develop a sense of feel that unlocks insight and understanding.

See them think. Hear them breathe. Connect with them in person.