It has recently come to my attention that social media is a household term now. Whether we know what it really means or the capability to reach billions of people it possesses is not in question, but needless to say, it is hear to stay.

It is in film, television, music, smartphones and the everyday foundation of how we exist today.

That is a handful to embrace. Some of us are grandfathered in while our younger counterparts have been here since the ground up. It is time to reach out and welcome our new lifestyle with open arms.

Let’s take a few moments to learn how Recruiterpoet has recently connected with his colleagues and expanded his internal network via the World Wide Social playground. Last week I received an internal instant message from a programmer in Orlando introducing himself. He indicated that he did not know he listed the company on his Foursquare profile. Truth, he didn’t. He followed one of the company Twitter accounts and I requested the connection on Foursquare. I hope you are following. This will get more confusing.

Moving on to one of the brightest and creative HR minds that India has to offer. We have exchanged many conversations about futbol and technology over Gmail chat while his office mate found me on Facebook offering a chat at least once a week on life and travel.

Facebook has also helped me maintain a relationship with my favorite Customer Service Representative from the Philippines and Team Lead in Poland.

Now where does Linkedin fall into play? This is known as the “Professional Social Network” Aside from daily interface with team colleagues and former associates, this is my avenue of communication with a Marketing Manager in Brazil.

Yammer! Yammer! Yammer!
Did someone say Yammer? An intranet site with an external website costume. That is another pool of associates that exchange content about the life and times at our fine institution.

How does our team share information outside the stratosphere of work; easy, our Ning group. With the convenience of widgets, blogs, pictures and posts, we have a little club for work outside of work.

Information sometimes needs to be instantaneous. Now for the curve ball, Group Me. Group Me is a text based community application. A number can be created for a group and then members can opt in so that texts can be shared at a group level.

Prior to the new year, I received a Facebook message from a former high school friend. Not only did he not realize we worked for the same company, but he told me that he got more information about the company from my wall posts than our intranet site. Quite a compliment I would say.

Through LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare and mobile campaigns we are sharing information about conferences, events and seminars to our customers, vendors, suppliers and clients as well as using these channels for sales prospecting.

Now it is a living breathing life form. As we continue to network, the communities will grow and expand, thus the possibilities are global and endless. We have entered into another dimension where reality and virtual technology have become one.

We are all integrated, but never lose site of the thing that has brought us to where we are today, human compassion and contact. We are shaped by connections and those that influence who we are and become. Don’t let interactive networking replace that.

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