The Economy, Mobility and Facebook by Gary Cohen

We are the mobile workforce. No other country offers the freedom to move around, search for and grasp at opportunity within its borders like the US. Our migration to any of the 50 states escalated with the recessions of the mid 80’s, early 90’s and blow up of the .com era. This movement affected primarily the end of the Boomers and Gen X’ers. I fall into this group, having uprooted from Denver many years ago to eventually live on both coasts. Career aspirations (directly tied to economics) motivated me to move on and leave the hometown I loved. Ties were broken.

Traditionally, the way to reconnect with those friends from your formative high school years was to go to the once a decade reunion. I look at my dad’s era where most everyone stayed in Denver, and having the 20, 30 or 40 year reunion required little more than: 1) making a few locals calls to pinpoint everybody for an invite, and 2) getting people to drive 2-20 miles to the venue. And while everyone has their own reasons for attending or not, a common rationale is to discover what happened to the people who influenced you.

For my 20 year reunion in 2000, most people could not be found. Some didn’t want to be found while others had no mechanism for plugging in. During that time Classmates.com and later Reunions.com appeared, which charge for services and competed at solving the need for reconnecting student bodies. It seems I have gotten their spam since I first got an e-mail account. Currently, Facebook (FB) seems to be eclipsing them on so many levels that it is incredible and epidemic. Facebook’s registered user base has grown from 50M users at the end of 2007 to over 150M today (www.facebook.com/statistics 1/09). The majority of new users last year were over 30. Did I mention it’s free? I reluctantly set up a FB account about a year ago. Reluctantly because I am the self professed ‘King of LinkedIn’. During 2008, I consciously ignored FB, left it to my kids and left it alone to organically grow by itself.

Then on December 20th the FB siren went off. My old high school friends, flames and fiends began inviting me to be their friends on FB. Within 2 weeks over a dozen connections were made. WTF is going on I thought? I found that the open access to friend lists (of nearly anyone) leads to a viral domino effect of remembering, inviting and growing a base of FB friends. I suspected that it was just “our time” (my class of 1980) to catch the wave. I then shared this observed phenomena with friends in Chicago, Boston and Dallas. To my surprise…the exact same flurry of high school connections were happening to them on FB. Coincidence? I think not.

My theory is that there is a confluence of several factors that is propelling what was a novel social networking tool for primarily Americans 12-29 years old into a mainstream mechanism for communal discourse on FB:
1) The down Economy resulted in a uniquely different Holiday Season
People did not travel like they normally have over the holidays
Resulting in more time on their hands to go on the Internet
2) Easiest Internet Access ever: Broadband and Mobile Internet Access
Facebook saw a fourfold increase in mobile usage of it’s based from 1.2M users/mo. in Nov 2007 to 5.1M in Nov 2008. (According to Nielsen Mobile 1/09)
3) Stage of life for 31-49 year olds: Mobile, Responsible, Concerned

The timing of this mass cyber explosion is not chance. FB is as portable as is one’s music, work-out bag, phone number and garage door opener. Only this hosted bit of technology solves a lower level need that is essential to gaining greater power during times of uncertainty: Belongingness. This is and has been the core proposition of social networking. You can connect back in anywhere at any time. In this real life scenario, you can be an active player in an exclusive community that you are already an honorary member of and have been for 20+ years.

With the sifting sands of our economy people are looking for solid and familiar ground to set an anchor where they can find it. One way to do that is to reconnect with the people that were with you when you started to perceive the bigger world. Those were your high school classmates. While not trying to find answers to the bigger concerns of today (Jobs, Health Insurance, War, Retirement funds, etc...), this segment of America is searching for the answer to: “We all started out in about the same socio-economic class, and how are we doing amidst the concerns of today?” You can wait until the reunion to get a sense of grounding, or you can log in and get it instantly through FB. Because on top of finding out if they are married, divorced, have kids, like where the live, go on cool vacations, you ultimately discover that they are OK. And you know what, you are OK too.

A bright spot for this period will be that FB attains a lasting aura, like that of a well attended reunion which served a purpose not predicated on a predetermined date, but by the needs of a generation.

“Turn the damn thing off”

In 1986 when I was selling one of the first cellular phones in Denver, a prospect said to me, “I don’t want a phone in my car. It’s the only place where no one can find me.” It actually caught me off guard, but as the months progressed, I got better and better at handling that objection. First I retorted that, “it has a ‘POWER button’ and you can turn it off if you don’t want to be disturbed.” Then I added the all powerful: It is a tool for you to use when you chose to: power it up, power it down, give your phone number out, or don’t give your phone number out.

That helped me sell a lot of phones, along with an ROI that it was giving people the ability to buy more (productive) time. When Caller ID hit in the early ‘90’s, it was fantastic. You could freely give your number out, and then screen your calls. With this capability, nearly all cellular numbers made it onto business cards. By the late ‘90’s cellular became like a garage door opener: once you got used to just pushing the button during a big rain or snow and driving on in, no one ever goes back to getting out of the car to lift the door. "How did you ever live without it?"

Last week, a good friend was lamenting about his newly acquired first Blackberry: It was becoming all consuming to him. I said, “Well, what did you expect? That’s why they’re called ‘Crack’berrys.” He went on and on about going on vacation and constantly looking at it. I said, “Turn the damn thing off and stop bothering everyone else.”

Is History repeating itself? Not exactly: Early cellular was car based. Most people jealously guarded their mobile number. Minutes of Use were 10X the cost or more. It was primarily a local calling apparatus.

Since then, technology has given us incredible advancements in the cellular networks, devices and software. Given that e-mails, within the broader internet were predicated on a model that had zero incremental cost, and our e-mail could be read anywhere at any time: Everyone has an expectation that you will read your e-mail and respond. Maybe you will do it instantly, or eventually. However since the written medium has more permanence than the spoken word, the record of the request forces an action.

This 'semi-formal record' is what causes the uneasiness and anxiety about Blackberries. Consciously or unconsciously someone has documented an attempt to reach you. Whether the message was sent to your desk, or to your mobile, the sender doesn’t know or care. What weighs on your mind as the receiver, is conscious knowledge that these obligations (e-mails) are building.

Like 22 years ago, my advice is the same. Having these devices allows me to control my time. I think they are great, but I won’t ever let it control me: The Blackberry is my tool to control and not the other way around. Know when to say when and just put it away when appropriate.

There are no bad dogs, only bad owners. It’s not the Blackberry itself that is causing this much stress, it’s their owners.