In marketing blogs, we tend to go on and on about the power of social networking for connecting business to customers and for fostering business change. However in doing so, we tend to forget the real reason why social networks are so dominating our lives and how they completely change the shape of our world.
I was reminded of this just yesterday on Facebook in a very personal way. Facebook has over the years received a variety of praise and criticism. Some people argue that it’s gotten too big for its britches. While I would argue the opposite. That just as this world needs a single site to collect and host the sum knowledge of humanity, here I refer to Wikipedia, the world also needs a single site where everybody can find and connect to the people they want to. That’s the true singular reason behind the rapid growth of Facebook -people searching to make and maintain connections with friends and family.
The story that hit this home so clearly and emotionally to me was the incredible discovery of a message on my Facebook account from somebody who I thought was lost to me forever. The is the story of my niece, who vanished 21 years ago somewhere in Southern California as the result of some incredible ill-conceived legal ruling by an incredibly moronic Californian custody judge. As the years went by, our side of the family moved and went international, making us hard to find. And for years it seems my niece has been searching for us. But now, because Facebook has become the single point of contact for everybody in our family, no matter where they live, she was finally able to discover her long lost father and family.
There are some miracles in life we can’t explain. The cancer patient who suddenly is cured. Or the cripple who can walk. Here we have a miracle enabled by technology. Where a person, who has felt disconnected, lost and lonely for a lifetime, can suddenly discover an entire family that they previously only dreamed of.
As we continue to look for ways to leverage social media for business, let us remember that in the end we are connecting humans to humans. Whether they are customers to suppliers, marketers to consumers, friends to friends or family to family. And it is in this vastly increasing web of very human connections that we will see global social change happen leading to the blossoming of a new moral and ethical center of businesses and of intercultural social tolerance.
