Shrunk Cyber World

Facebook has teamed up with Jobster Inc., hoping to integrate college social-networking site with recruitment functions. These days, the trend seems to be social networking being connected with bunch of other social networking sites and additional functions. It was Metcalfe who stated that “the value of network increases as the size of network increases”. True, facebook with no friends means nothing. However, too many strategically different networks crossing over one SNS is noisy and it has cost: the loss of direction and segmentation. The mergers are as if, integrating kid’s favorite 3D game function, and businessman’s financial calculator function into the same cell-phone, and try to market to everyone. …anyways, even now, students are concerned about their private pictures being exposed to non-friends, after the integration of Jobster, Facebook would probably loose a lot of silly shared pictures.

Also for the employer side, the partnering with social networking does not have such a dramatic effect as it seems. Sure, it will make easier for employer to find the passive candidates, and as technology has always made, it will be useful and easy. Employers can tag candidate’s skill and bookmark them. However, the easiness of use would generate overload of information while number of candidates exist on the earth would stay constant. It means you would get 500 hits out of million instead of 1 hit out of 10. If it is easier to tag people, it is also easier to untag them, too.

Soon, it will be: you know million people to hire, but you have one to trust. As “The Power of Weak Ties” argues, the referral is becoming the most effective recruitment method. It is interesting trend despites all the effort of social networking. Social networking connection after all shrunk the world down to the referral networks. Maybe the value of network decreases as the strategic purpose within the network increases or entropy within the network increases.