Wednesday, March 9, 2011
A Small World or Not?
Academia often seems like a small world where everyone knows everyone else. But my experiences on LinkedIn suggest the opposite. Most of the people I am connected to on LinkedIn are only connected to perhaps 1-2 people that I am already connected to and when I browse their lists of connections there are normally only 1-2 other people that I have ever heard of that I'm not yet linked to. So the areas of overlap in our circles of acquaintance are only a few percent at most. I doubt this is just something unique to me and the people I know. So is it really not a small world at all?
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A lot of academics don't use it much, I think - you and I have two connections in common and you have about 4-5 others I could plausibly be connected to, but most of mine are people I'm less connected to through the 'regular' academic channels (or friends who see it as a nerdier facebook, I think).
ReplyDeleteA lot of academics seem to be on it, but maybe they aren't connecting to other academics through it so much? There are more people I know on it than on academia.edu for example.
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