Because it works. 

Next ques­tion.

Okay, kid­ding. Not about the part where I said that it works, though. It does work. Social net­work­ing gives all the peo­ple who use it, for all their dif­fer­ent rea­sons, what they want. 

Some peo­ple want to be able to stay informed, whether it’s from dia­logue with friends or updates about their favorite sites, news, or inter­ests online. 

Other peo­ple want to learn more about the peo­ple they’re going to meet offline, by meet­ing them in the online world first. It’s a heck of a way to get closer to peo­ple you admire, if only for a few min­utes, and often facil­i­tates the chance to meet them in person. 

For every­one, it’s the same rea­son we net­work offline. Peo­ple are social creatures. 

Social net­work­ing doesn’t have to be this time suck that takes you away from the real world. You can learn to use it effec­tively in as lit­tle as 0 min­utes a day. 

That’s right. I said 0. Some of my most pro­duc­tive days on Face­book are days when I haven’t logged in at all. 

But more about that another day. 

Social net­work­ing also doesn’t need to replace real world inter­ac­tion — but it sure is neat to get busi­ness from the other side of a world from a per­son you haven’t met because they Googled you and found that you have a pris­tine reputation. 

Or even the sim­ple joy of mak­ing the acquain­tance of some­one from a dif­fer­ent culture.

I know. That rhymed. I used to be a poet.

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