Jacob Morgan, ‘the social business advisor’ http://bit.ly/fzxTMx posits that the problem is that email does not allow for collaboration. “ Sharing files amongst groups is also not very efficient and overall collaboration functionality is just limited.” In short many people feel that email is adding to problems rather than solving them.

2.Email has a proper etiquette with consequences:

Email etiquette for certain email situations varies don’t you know. For example the way you speak to your boss should differ entirely from an email you’d send to a friend. Seems logical no? But you’d be surprised at how many email faux pas one can make. Using the wrong etiquette can really rub people up the wrong way…

Wonderful blog by Judith Kallos explores all the ins and outs of email etiquette,  http://bit.ly/fq90n where she implores us to put our ‘egos on the shelf’ and realise that our words in emails matter.

3. Email detracts from overall life happiness:

More and more people are declaring ‘email bankruptcy’. A somewhat radical move where people delete their full accounts for a certain period of time, or even for ever…

The call to action for email bankruptcy has become somewhat of a trend. A tempting solution to those who feel overwhelmed by the daily influx of email.

Anderson on Shine describes feeling ‘bullied’ by email: http://yhoo.it/udpOMk and advocates life coaches who advise email bankruptcy for a healthy and balanced life.
Along the same lines, Guardian writer Debbie Weil describes email bankruptcy as the route to modern day happiness: http://bit.ly/4lol4

So overall, email leaves many people  overwhelmed and with no apparent choice but to declare email bankruptcy.

But just removing yourself doesn’t really solve the problem, you’re just shifting all your contacts to another channel.

Rather people need to learn to be more productive and efficient so you never feel overwhelmed, rather you feel completely in control. This is what Handy Elephant’s new product is targeting: helping you take control of when people reply to you. What could be better? So don’t shy away, take control, or if you can’t let the elephant help…

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In modern day terms, The Widower Effect can be seen in the trendier subject of the ‘obesity epidemic’, and the discovery that if your friends are a certain body shape, you will be more likely to share that norm.

Research by social scientist Nicholas A. Christakis’ demonstrated that if your friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 45 % higher.  And if your friend’s friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 25 % higher. If your friend’s friend’s friend (someone you probably don’t know) is obese, your risk of obesity is 10% higher!
Only when you get to your friend’s friend’s friend’s friend’s is there no longer a relationship between person’s body size and your own body size!

It all goes to show the incredible ripple effect of behaviour and activity happening through friendship groups, eventually linking everyone in the world.  And its our social networks, offline and online, which allow these behaviours to spread.

The New York Times used The Widower Effect as a way pass the buck, running the hilarious headline.  ”Are you packing it on? Blame your fat friends”!  But The Widower Effect isn’t a way to shift responsibility; it’s a way to influence our world.

Because it’s not just negative health trends that can be spread in this way; Christakis asked whether less tangible phenomena could be spread in this way.  Could emotions have a collective existence across the social network, not just an individual existence in each member?

He mapped out people who were happy, sad or in between. And definite ‘blotches’ of emotions could be seen. In a way the whole world becomes patched out with people linked by shared similar emotions, so perhaps your mood and well being depends on whether you occupy a ‘happy patch’.

So the next time you’re using an online network, remember that you have a responsibility, not just to your friends, but also their friends, and their friends’ friends, and onwards all around the world.  Act happy happy, act healthy, and others just might start to follow your lead.

To hear the expert, Nicola Christakis: http://bit.ly/abJrAJ, it will change the way you look at people in your life and your friends list.

Was this useful? What do you think?

By Iain Farrell

I did not want to be ‘googleable’, I was adamant that Facebook would be one of few user names and passwords I had to memorise. I was willing to enjoy other people’s posts, pictures, and endless wealth of information without ever making my presence felt…I was one of the 84% who read your blog, chuckles and appreciates, but does not comment. The silent accumulated clicks on your web page, they were me. I was even one of those annoying people whose phone is incapable of allowing an email response. Yes I can answer a call, but only when I have time, and email and Facebook have to wait until 7pm when I turn on my laptop.

However, this began to change 6weeks ago when I joined Handy Elephant. Although I didn’t think it through, working for a tech app is unwritten code for ‘get with it granny’. And so I did, slowly but surely.

First I joined LinkedIn, I began to appreciate its differences and advantages as a professional space compare to Facebook. My co-workers helped me link up my laptop to super big screens where I could have everything up at the same time and still in readable font. Then I started blogging (as you can see). Oh so sneakily the old Nokia 33.10 was replaced ( a classic I still maintain) and gave me a shiny HTC Android phone.

The final breakthrough came yesterday when to the ecstasy of the CEO, I surprised myself by saying: “I should really get my own twitter account”. And so I joined, and I ‘followed’ and I was instantly thrilled. Twitter is like the endless flicking through of all your favourite magazines, blogs and people all in one place. Plus being dyslexic the short and sweet 140 limit suits me down to a tee.

And so now I’m converted. A full tech geek in the waiting. I am ‘that’ girl, glued to her phone on the subway and I love it.Having sat down to think of this transformation, I now realise that subtle changes in my communication have also changed the form of my relationships. For example, my texts are longer, more thoughtful, more expressive. I now comment and make sure I show appreciation for other content, understanding that this makes a big difference – and that half the time the response is as interesting as the blog itself. I take notes after my calls [thanks Handy Elephant ], I keep in touch with a much more diverse range of people and circles. I realise that I’m growing as an interesting and varied person.

I have realised that the internet is there, a force unstoppable in its increasing presence in our lives. Bits of you will be online in some form whether you like it or not. Practically everyone is ‘googleable’ if you try hard enough – and tools like Rapportive can even take that effort away from you.

So you may as well take control of your own destiny. Create your own first impression, and people will see you in the right light (doesn’t matter if you just joined networks like Twitter, or if you are competing with Justin Bieber for the top Klout). There is always room to ‘edit’ and ‘undo’ if you change your mind… In my techno coming of age, I leave you with the bio of guardian tech writer Aleks Krotoski, which in my circumstance has never been truer: “I tweet therefore I am”.

Have you made the ‘geek leap’ yet? What obstacles do you find when it comes to social media? Please tell us, we want to know!

Think of all your contacts as words in a dictionary. There are the words you are familiar with, know the definitions off by heart, the words you use daily and love dearly. These are strong ties. But now think of that rich bank of all those other words… i.e. your weak ties. Weak ties offer endless amounts of new information, that can only help you grow and learn.So why has building new relationships and keeping in touch with people on an occasional basis (i.e. just maintaining “weak ties” with them) proved to be in-valuable across professions and industry sectors? Why is this type of networking being talked about all the time?

As opposed to strong ties, weak ties tend to offer

• a higher level of diversity, i.e. they have skills or expertise which are complementary to yours. Your strong ties tend to do and are interested in similar things to you, that’s why you spend a lot of time with them. Say you have a work problem with your company’s marketing strategy. You could instantly ask that accountant friend of yours for an opinion. However, that weak tie you made at a conference a couple of months ago, is a marketing consultant. His advice may be way more valuable to you, because he knows this sort of thing.

• It is through the weak tie that you get to other groups. Your strong ties are all generally part of one big same group, sharing a very similar interest, culture and location. Whereas a weak tie can introduce you to their skydiving hippy friends or their relatives who live in Dubai, which you would never come across in your daily routine.

• More serendipity of course! You never know where your weak tie will take you next, the possibilities are endless… Being closer to your stronger ties, one tends to know / have exhausted all the opportunities they can offer us to new experiences.

So the value of building and sustaining weak relationships with others depends on their skills, expertise and access to information, that can be complementary and therefore valuable to you – right now or later on. And to make the most of it, you have to identify the (complementary-wise) strongest of your weak ties and focus on sustaining those relationships by keeping in touch regularly.

What do you think? How much time do you spend with weak ties compared to strong ties?
What do you do to make sure you keep in touch with any of your relationships regularly? Comment and let us know…