Smarter social networking at SMCDC

Tonight, I’ll be moderating a discussion at Porter Novelli DC about what “smarter social networking” means.

Fortunately, posing questions to this particular set of panelists will be much more easier than trying to herd LOLcats.

Some time shortly after 7 PM EST, I’ll start asking Frank Gruber (@FrankGruber), CEO & co-founder of TechCocktail, Shana Glickfield (@dcconcierge), partner at Beekeeper Group, and Shonali Burke (@shonali), principal at Shonali Burke Consulting, what “smarter social networking” means in 2011. We’ll be talking about forming relationships and acting professionally in the context of the Internet. I might even ask about what good “netiquette” means.

I expect to see Federal News Radio Chris anchor Chris Dorobek (@cdorobek) to be there in person to heckle me online, along with the rest of one of the more connected group of people in the District of Columbia. The DC Social Media Club, after all, comes heavily loaded with BlackBerrys, iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Some will even have two of those devices – one official, one not, and will be wired into Facebook, Twitter, email and txt messaging.

This is clearly a group of people that has thought a lot about how to practice “smarter social networking.” As prepared for the discussion last night, I was reminded that the actions that humans take online increasingly are aligned what they do offline.

That’s because the idea of a separate “cyberspace” is on life support. That’s was one conclusion that Clay Shirky brought to a discussion of the recent report by the Pew Internet and Life Project on the social side of the Internet at the State of the Net Conference.

In wired communities, people are increasingly integrating their online lives with their offline actions. As that trend grows with more of humanity coming online, the role of the Internet as a platform for collective action increases. The world has seen some of that power at work in Tunisia and Egypt this winter.

Those connections are not always strongly made, due to the anonymity sections of the Web of 2011 provide. You only have to look at the quality of civil discourse between commentary on YouTube or newspaper comment threads without moderation to see how anonymity can enable the id of humanity to wash over a page. Teachers, freedom fighters, activists, law enforcement, aid workers, insurgents, journalists or criminals can and will use the Internet for different ends. When any tool is put to ugly or evil use, naturally it provokes outrage, concern, regulation or outright bans.

As Stowe Boyd wrote this weekend in his essay on cognition and the Web, however, “throwing away the web because you don’t like what you see is like breaking a mirror because you don’t like your own reflection. It is us we are staring at in that mirror, on the web: and it is us looking out, too.”It is us we are staring at in that mirror, on the web: and it is us looking out, too.”

In this age of radical transparency, it’s becoming harder and harder to hide to hide demonstrated bad character over time. That’s even more true of people who choose to live their lives more publicly on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and where ever else there digital nomadism leads them next.

This isn’t an entirely happy development, as the number of citations of social networking in divorce filings suggest. By the end of the next decade, more people may well be paying money to assure their privacy than to gain more publicity.

In that context, “smarter social networking” in an age of digital transparency may well rely more on good character, better business ethics and placing value in building trusted relationships than faster wireless broadband, the newest smartphone or millions of followers or fans.