The social media experiment, updated…

Pardon the “about me”-ness of this post in advance, but it’s time for an update…

So…as close as I can figure, I’ve been on my social media experiment exactly 14 weeks. That is, 14 weeks ago tomorrow (6/27/09) I gave in to my friend Doug Lawrence and asked him to help me join facebook.

It’s been an interesting ride. About 20 minutes ago I logged my 1000th friend (thanks, Emily Bender…I remember you when you were just a twinkle in your father’s eye…). That just seems amazing to me. Do I “know” all these people? Well…no. But, you know, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends, six degrees of separation and all that, and now I seem to know a good chunk of the working Christian musician population of the Nashville area, even though I’ve only been there a couple of times (once to pick up the entire inventory of my music publishing company because of a distribution arrangement that was, in a word, bad…but that’s a completely ‘nother story).

As I’ve said before, I don’t consider myself a social person. I’m not the gregarious type. In fact that’s me over there at your party…in the corner…watching curiously…and enjoying myself. But this social media thing is completely different. It has allowed me to be more social on my own terms, and, in a way, be more social in face to face situations.

Here’s why I think it works. It is a safe way to be introduced to people that you don’t presently know (or, at least, know well). In most cases people don’t want to be (and aren’t) anti-social on facebook (now Twitter? that’s different story too…the vibe there is more…friendly…and more often…), and so fb people aare polite about accepting people that have at least some connection, and who ask politely (at least that’s my experience).

And then you find out who is a constant communicator, and who only visits once every few weeks. And, you can interact with people in a way that deepens the connection, even if it is, after all, two dimensional. And then <…and then…and then… …along came Jones…ooops sorry…tangental 50s tune flashback> when you go to a conference and you meet…well…there’s something to talk about.

So…it has worked for me.

Disclaimer: your results may vary.

Now that I’m at 1000, I’ve decided to “back off” in terms of creating my network, and see what happens. I expect the growth rate will slow down, but I’m curious to find out. There is something to the critical mass rule, though, because in the last week or so, I’ve been approached by more people who want to be my friend than I had been over the previous 12+ weeks. We’ll see.

In other news…

One of the reasons I’m backing away a bit is that I’m now knee deep in the pre-launch phase of the new extension for Creator‘s website. We’ve got a tentative launch date of either the Tuesday or Wednesday (9/9/09) after Labor Day, and, quite frankly there is a lot to be done. The major hurdles have been cleared, but now comes all the myriad of details that simply must get done before launch. I continue to be very excited about this service, which I think will be an extraordinary “value add” to our product mix.

The other reason I’m easing up is that I’ll be out of town next week (6/28-7/5) for a long overdue vacation. The blog may be “dark” for several days next week, but don’t go away, because I’ll be back. During my time away I’ll be taking another editorial pass at my book, and I hope to have a complete draft done by the time I’m back. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, enjoy your summer, and the Independance Day holiday. See you soon…