hidden power of social networks

Anne’s discussion on “Hidden Power of Social Networks” was another example of connectivity, which seems to be all we talk about. Part of her discussion was about breaking people up into groups and having us find what was similar about our blogs. It was an interesting way to look at breaking down social networks. I think that if we really wanted to, we could have found a way to group any random people in our class together and found some sort of blog similarity between us. I think her point about not being able to categorize everyone together, in terms of business employees was very valid. I think a lot of times whether it be in business, sports, or other uniform social walks of life, people are judged by standards that may not be the right way to look at everyone. For instance, in sports, just because a basketball player can score 20 points doesn’t necessarily mean he is a valuable player. He might play on a losing team and only be scoring garbage points. A winning team might have a player who scores less than that guy, but rebounds and defends and does what it takes to win. This makes him the more valuable player. The same with what she says about the business employees and how a peripheral and central employee aren’t exactly cut and dry who is better. I learned from this discussion that it is easy to make the mistake of putting people in certain categories that may or may not accurately represent who they are or what they are capable of. You must be able to interpret results accurately.