For these people, the only way to find groups of people in your target market is the old method of going to events, or building online networks and exposure.

I believe the art of face-to-face sales is fading with commercial services, so being a vibrant and attractive (not necessarily looks) person in a public setting will inevitably build your personal community - wherever you are, and whatever you do.

It isn’t a “missing link” as much as a natural progression and a potential. The potential connectedness of everyone and every idea is a reality and an opportunity.

My post (as will be the continued focus of this site) wasn’t as much an argument for the qualitative socio-ontological ramifications of such a technologically enabled existential holism, as it was a statement that this is the world in which we live, and an exploration into leveraging. If you want to talk philosophy, I’d be glad, but this probably isn’t the forum. You, my bro, know that further abstracted philosophical considerations are close to heart. And I do fundamentally disagree — I couldn’t be happier than to live in THIS age of connectedness. The more experience, information, and community possible, the better (in my opinion). Humans are fundamentally social, existential, and ideological creatures — these are the things on which their very being depends. I’d be lying to myself if I tried to isolate myself from people, ideas, experience, or information. I’d be denying my own humanity. The whole anarcho-primitivist thing just doesn’t fly for me.

I didn’t respond to Tonya’s comment because we got into the subject over e-mail. BUT, I will respond to you in the same way I eventually responded to her:

Infrastructure, opportunity, and potential are what you make of them. If you choose to de-humanize the level of potential connectedness we have now, it can lead to hell. If you don’t care about your facebook or myspace friends and instead just shallowly use those as avenues to advertise yourself, you’ll get nothing but shallow community in response — just like the the geo-local physical world. IF I went around my college campus at lunch blabbing about how great I was, I doubt I’d have very many friends sitting with me over food, unless I had something they wanted. The use of selfish gain as a motivator can be a vicious circle.

BUT, if I choose to use those infrastructures in deep and profound ways (physical or cyber-space) then the passive power of social connectedness (that which social marketing is based on) will drive that care and depth of relationship outward and eventually back to me. You get what you put in, so to speak. Want commitment? Care? Put it in first. Before you point the finger at someone else (or call the medium/infrastructure inherently bad) examine yourself and how you’re using it.

Does our world of infinite potential connection have the potential for more severe negative relational impact? Sure — if used the wrong way. But it also has the potential for greater good, too.

That’s the main point of this post: ALWAYS put in your all; the best you can give. People will see.

-A

Are you suggesting that the ubiquitous Internet is a/the ‘missing link’ in human social culture? It seems to me that what the digital revolution has done is to increase the viability of whimsical communication. Although there are certain benefits to this, I would argue that it makes long-term relational/intellectual commitments less plausible, thus (from my current perspective) actually proving a detriment to general social quality, and by extension, ’social marketing.’

Tonya’s comment about her Myspace friendships sort of backs this up, actually.

Yeah, I know it’s more complicated than that. Just trying to grow our community.