Blurring the Lines
The lines are blurring between our personal and professional lives. We refer friends to our employer. We befriend colleagues, clients, and business partners. We work from home, we exercise at work, we work for ourselves. The added social capital from our personal relationships and fringe relationships are empowering us with broader networks that give us access to more information, people, and resources than ever before. Meanwhile, e-commerce and Web 2.0 have given us as individuals not only a voice, but also the power to act. By using online social networking tools to keep in touch with fringe networks, discover valuable relationships, transcend traditional hierarchy, and ask more favors, we can maximize social capital, enjoy more satisfying careers, and ultimately be more effective at achieving our goals.