The Power of Social Networks

Given my not so recent addiction to Twitter it was no surprise, that a few minutes after a friend of mine Tweeting a story on the Australian iPhone release, I would be reading the referenced article. What did surprise me that, on the next refresh of my Twitter client – I had a tweet from a 19 year old biology student in Auckland, NZ telling me that she’d been sent my way by the original tweeter.

Tweeting back and forth, I was able to answer her questions regarding an iPhone release in New Zealand (not that I could speak officially/as an employee on the subject – but did manager to point her to these articles from The Dominion Post and Rod Drurys Blog).

Anyway – she was able to conclude that it the device might come to NZ but it didn’t seem likely to be through official channels for her current cellular provider. There’s a number of people using the device already in NZ so I asked one of my friends who has done this if it was okay to put this young lady in touch with him. Of course he agreed and I tweeted his email details back a few seconds later. I’m awaiting an update as to how she gets on.

But there you go – 15 minutes after an article being posted on an open message system, two people previously unknown to each other had connected via the original poster (levels of trust established), had a discussion and exchanged links to alternate sources (verifying accuracy of your primary source / building additional trust), verified with a third party via yet another contact medium (txt in this case as his IM client was offline, and I’m impatient), and contact details exchanged to resolve the detail (email address, as the guy I was putting her in touch with has his twitter identity set to private). The result – 1 young lady who can now act on the interest sparked by an article referring to a technology not officially available in her home country – with the assurance that someone else has been through the process before her and can share her experience.

Isn’t the interweb an interesting place?


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