Social Networking and the Necessity of Real-World Relationships
---
title: "Social Networking and the Necessity of Real-World Relationships"
date: 2009-01-03
tags: [business, marketing]
status: archive (read-only)
---
# Social Networking and the Necessity of Real-World Relationships
Most of you reading this post are using [twitter](twitter.com/jonpederson/…), [facebook](www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=…), [friendfeed](friendfeed.com/jonpederson…) or any number of other socializing services on the Webernet. Social apps are a great way to keep in touch with people, and build relationships with people you've never met face-to-face, but how many of you have been focusing too much time on using these services?
As great as it may be to have short (140 character) instances of communication with many people, don't think that it even comes close to building real-world relationships. Getting away from your desk and interacting with another person is where awesome things happen. The popularity of [tweetups](search.twitter.com/search?q=twee…) are becoming rampant, and for good reason. It's pretty easy to *know about* a lot of people, take [Guy Kawasaki](twitter.com/guykawasaki…), [Gary Vaynerchuk](twitter.com/garyvee…), [Jason Calacanis](twitter.com/JasonCalacanis…) or [Loic Le Meur](twitter.com/loiclemeur…) for example, but to *know* someone takes more levels of communication than what can be accomplished on the Internet. When it's time to get serious work done, it's not happening on facebook. It's happening at a table.
So, take the opportunity to get to *know* some of these people you currently only *know about*. Organize a tweetup, grab coffee or lunch, and start making your time spent with social networking worth something by creating real-world relationships.