Technology Updates - Boomers vs. Millennial's

As most of you are aware I am always interested in different generations and their relationship with technology, in particular the technologies we have been studying throughout the semester. As a side not this blog is not fact based but instead based solely upon recent experiences with my family, friends and coworkers. 

LinkedIn & Facebook

Last evening at dinner a family friend asked me to explain LinkedIn because he was sent a friend/network request. I explained the social networking capabilities including building an online professional network. The network I told him allows you to keep in touch with business professionals and enables you to network with people you have always wanted to meet or maybe would not have met without the service. I asked him if he was considering joining and he said absolutely not. He explained to me that his method of networking is much more about personal face to face relationships and went on to tell me that he rarely uses his e-mail for business and when he cannot meet his clients has a phone based relationship with them. 

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I myself registered for LinkedIn and have yet to find it very fulfilling. As much as it is about social networking it is not a fun website to visit where you are keeping in touch with people you are friendly with. I think what Facebook has done right, and why so many people have joined, is that it has become a portal for professional life and personal life where you look forward to signing in and checking out what friends and colleagues are up to. 

Recently my entire team at my internship have signed up for Facebook. It has made the office dynamic very interesting firstly because if you are friends with your coworkers the material you have on the website must be appropriate and secondly because what we do on Facebook tends to consume our conversations with one another. When I asked my coworkers why they joined they said so that they could stay in touch with high school friends and former coworkers. They told me that upon joining they were amazed by how many of their friends were already on the site and the applications it provided. 

This made me wonder, is it that social networking websites are generational or that some are just way better than others. My next study is to see if my mom or dad will sign up for the service and see what they think...