Social Networking and Recent College Grads

Last night at the Social Media club meeting I had a couple of great conversations. One in particular about the college social networking space and the rise of Facebook and the needs it fulfills has changed. Since graduating from college back in December, I have found that it is a great way to stay in touch with college and high school friends I connected with during college.

My guess is that if it was 10 - 15 years ago, and I had recently graduated, I would not be in touch with at least half of the people I am today. Why is this? Because a tool like Facebook (and other social networks) make it extremely easy to maintain informal communications. Eventhough I haven’t had a face to face, phone, or email conversation with a large portion of my facebook network in over 6 months, I would have no reservations about contacting them through facebook.

Despite this, there is a huge void that Facebook and no other existing social network fills today; the recent graduate crowd. Almost every recent college grad, myself included, that moves away to a new place to pursue a career, has trouble adjusting to the dramatic shift in social life. It is much tougher to find similar people to connect with. Your day to day network is largely reduced to people that you work and live with.

The communication needs are dramatically different for recent grads compared to those still in college. How they are different, I am still figuring out. Are they more demanding? More restrictive? More isolated? I don’t really know, but it is interesting to think about how a new targeted social network could possibily fill this void and potentially solve a huge issue millions of recent grads in the U.S. are facing.
Anyone else have thoughts on this?

[tags]Social Networking, Social Network, Facebook, Recent Graduates, Social Media, Brian Balfour[/tags]