Connection is the New Mania

By Liz Ryan, 4-24-07

Back in 1999 when I started my first email group in Chicago (called ChicWIT), most of my friends didn’t know what a list-serv was. Today, they know. In 2003 when I got my first LinkedIn invitation, I didn’t know what to make of it. Now, my friends have hundreds of LinkedIn contacts and I read about a dozen LinkedIn requests a day. Like lots of other LinkedIn users, I’ve reached the state where I’m “cutting the cord” on my connections as often as I add new ones—actually, more often. Live and learn. As soon as there is a new channel, LinkedIn being one example, people will figure out how to get obsessive about it.

After LinkedIn, in my networking-tools education, came Jaxtr, where people can call me on the spot (VOIP, for free) from anywhere in the world, and my cell phone number isn’t part of the equation. Then, someone told me about Jott - it’s not really a networking tool, but it lets you record messages to yourself from your cellphone that are deposited in your email.

Today, my friend Jackson, who is designing a logo for me, invited me to join AIM so we can pass images and comments back and forth. That really made me laugh - isn’t AIM an AOL brand? My 13-year-old daughter begged me to get her on AIM when it cost $20 a month, all the way back a year ago. Now, I guess, it is free - user-generated content is da bomb! I signed up. My screen name is Lizstmania, in case you were wondering that about. After all these years, I’m an AOL user.

Yahoo!Answers and LinkedIn Answers are two more ways for obsessive connectors to stay connected to people, all the time, from anywhere. I must say the Yahoo! Answer people came through for me in the middle of the night on Sunday when I couldn’t figure out who the Yahoo!groups site was giving me a 999 error. There was a workaround, from somebody who’d been there before and figured out a solution. If it happens to you, get to Yahoo! through a international partner instead of Yahoo!com. Tricky.

I am sitting in Kinko’s right now, not a mile from my house in Boulder, because the kids are home from school and it’s too crazy there. I am writing articles, but I have to check my email online every half-hour or so in case—you know—in case someone urgently needs me, which has happened exactly never since I started working 20 years ago.

When I first moved to Boulder I read my work email at the office. I didn’t read it at home. I didn’t have time. I had four small kids and then, another baby. Now the kids are older (4-13) and I read all my mail, all my email accounts, at all hours of the day, and that isn’t enough, so I have to check LinkedIn and all my blogs and then check Technorati in case someone said something about one of my columns that I need to know about. NEED TO KNOW. That is the problem.

Now I am setting up a Group on LinkedIn and God knows what will happen with that. What is the nature of connection, anyway? There are people I’ve corresponded with online for a decade, but I couldn’t tell you whether, at the end of the day, they are good or bad people, trustworthy or not...still, we are connected, whatever that means.