Does FaceTime with friends suffer from online relationships?
One of the characteristics of “socialholics” is that they don’t distinguish between on and off. “Always on” means there is only one world, not two. When I started my blog, in 2004, I started also a strong networking activity. On August 31st, 2005, for example, five bloggers met for the first time in Madrid. We had never met each other in person and we named the meeting “Beers & Blogs”. When Octavio Rojas proposed to repeat the meetings each month it was the beginning of the “Beers & Blogs Madrid” meetups. In six months time from that day, some 50 people used to meet periodically in a bar and exchange conversation and, of course, beer, mixed in with some business opportunities.Many of the people who met around the blogging phenomenon at that time, have developed a career in the web 2.0 space and some others are even successful entrepreneurs.
And there are the TwittMad events and the Instagramers story as well. In six months time (once again but much bigger), 150 groups around the world have formed to meet together around the Instagram frenzy. And new groups are appearing everyday.
People meet online and want to meet offline. Traditional groups (school, family, old friends) may experience diminishing facetime from these activities. But new relations arise around special interests and hidden hobbies. FaceTime will increase, but “old boring friends” will be less relevant.
