In my recent post, “Beware of Snake Oil Salesmen Selling Social Media,” I talked about the differences between hot and cool media like face-to-face communication and blogs, respectively. Face time being hot because, as Mc Luhan said, a medium such as that contains gobs of information; you don’t need to fill in the blanks. Media such as blogs are less perfect, they’re cooler. Not just because some Gen Y brat says so. No, they’re “cooler” because, again Mc Luhan, these media contain less information. You must fill in the blanks in order to make much sense of, or derive some value from, them.
The comment, from Wallerbee, that resulted from my post brought out a good point, one which I couldn’t seem to reach in the article. Wallerbee’s point was that the Internet was good for maintaining existing relationships made via face time, but was not good for creating new relationships absent the all-important face time. Good point. I was thinking about this while reading a posting from Guru.com.
Guru.com is a site where consulting clients and consultants meet and hammer out deals. Here’s one job posting from that site:
We are a start-up business in need of a business plan. This is a small scale operation based out of XYZ, FL. We will need loans to proceed thus the importance of a quality business plan. Time is somewhat of an issue for us. We hired another company online…its 2 weeks past the delivery deadline and we have yet to receive a plan or a refund.
They hired another company online.
And probably without a face-to-face sit down.
The point is clear. Don’t use the Internet to create a relationship. But if you must. If you absolutely can’t stop yourself from doing so, then at least back it up with some hot face time and get to know the person you just met in one of the coolest mediums I’ve ever seen.
You might just get that business plan on time.
