The Online Home of Patrick Marr

No really. It did. And it got me thinking about social networks, and what Twitter has done to enhance the ones that already exist.

Early last week, a colleague of mine, @EPemmerl, fired off the following tweet:

Also, dear friend and I still interested in hiring prof photog for 9/26 for event. Any names to suggest? Finding someone last min is HARD!

To which I responded,

@EPemmerl: http://bit.ly/nLJDD

Which, of course, is the website of Elizabeth Strout, a local professional photographer that I’ve had the opportunity to work with. And from what I later heard from @EPemmerl and @estrout, they were able to arrange the details of the job that same morning. Sweet.

If Twitter didn’t exist:

1. @EPemmerl wouldn’t have a photographer.
2. @EStrout wouldn’t have a job on 9/26.
3. @pmarr wouldn’t feel good about solving a problem for one friend and sending a little $$ to another.

Ok, maybe @Epemmerl would have hired a photographer– it would have just been a little tougher for her to find one. But #2 and #3 definitely would not have happened.

Twitter isn’t the social network that allowed this connection to happen.  Rather, its a utility that allows us to extend and search against social networks that already exist. It reduces social cost.

Before Twitter, Facebook, et al, the utility of one’s social network was limited to what was already known, or at it’s maximum, a small amount of “search”.  This limit is set by an individual’s appetite to directly solicit aid from their co-workers, friends, etc. And that appetite is offset by the level of effort and social cost required to make the request.

For example, 5 years ago if I needed to hire a plumber, I would walk through these questions:

• Is anyone in my family a plumber?
• Are any of my friends plumbers?

If the answer to those questions is “No”, I have to move to the next level of my network:

• Do any of my friends or family have friends or family that are plumbers?

And in order to properly answer that question, I would have to decide: Is it worth the social cost?

Is it worth emailing all my friends? Do I want to call 20 people to see if they know plumbers? Will I get stuck on the phone with someone for 20 minutes? Will some people be bothered by the request?

Without Twitter, the social costs often outweighed the perceived benefit of leveraging my social network to find a trusted service provider: so I would use traditional means (Google search, Phone Book, etc.)

With Twitter, there is no social cost. I can post that request and will almost assuredly get a recommendation from one of my friends via their own network.

This keeps $$ out of the hands of Google, Idearc, and other publishers. And instead, keeps that $$ inside my social network.

Pretty neat.