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Aaron Strout

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One Degree of Separation

August 12, 2011 By Aaron Strout 5 Comments

Unless you live off the grid in the mountains of Idaho, you’ve likely heard of the theory of six degrees of separation. The concept made popular by the movie and the Kevin Bacon game speaks to the idea that everyone on this planet is connected by no more than six degrees of separation. And while I don’t really believe that we are separated by one degree like the title of this post suggests, I do feel like we are closer to two or three degrees than six. The problem is, when the idea of six degrees came along, there was no world wide web, Facebook or LinkedIn. Now that there is, we can start to see these connections more clearly than ever.

To illustrate my point of how small the world is (and how LinkedIn and Facebook help us see these connections), I asked the question on Google + and Facebook. Within minutes, I got some amazing responses, the most relevant of which I have included below.

    • Jeannie Walters – 1. My college roommate worked with my Chicago friend in Kansas City. Because of FB, we discovered this and the 3 of us had dinner when friend was visiting Chicago. 2. My cousin in Atlanta is connected to various business connections of mine. He is 10 years older and we have never lived in the same state.
    • DJ Waldow – Spoke with a women yesterday who say my blog post that included a video of +Jay Baer. Turns out that she lives in AZ and knew Jay back when he was Jason. Ha.
    • Damion White – When a fellow Davidson College athlete in my stats class looked over at my comp screen during class the Monday after spring break 2004, noticed my Facebook page (yes, I said 2004), and then mouthed that the girl who’s friend request I was accepting had arrived at his and her NJ HS graduation in a Rolls Royce Phantom. I asked what the hell he was getting at, and that was how I found out that one of the girls in the group from St. Johns University that we had hung out with and befriended on Spring Break in Miami was Vanessa Simmons, daughter of Reverend Run of Run DMC.
    • Elmer Boutin – On my employer’s Facebook page, we encourage people to share pictures of their kitchen remodels using our products. One person who did writes a blog. Reading that I found she was from my hometown in Michigan. I emailed her and found she lives 6-blocks away from my mom and her sisters went to high school with my brother.
    • Judy Madonna Moriarty – Absolutely! One of my FB/twitter friends in Miami (whom I’ve never met in real life but have had many on-line convos with) posted a pic of herself cheek-to-cheek with one of my oldest IRL friends from NYC who now lives in Miami. I found out later they’ve been friends for a long time. FB & Twitter are definitely shrinking the degrees of separation!
    • Alexa Scordato – How about that time you were in Minnesota and bumped into my friend Shawn Horton at the Apple Store? The three of us were only in the same location once and that was at Podcamp in Boston years ago. Super super small world!
    • Rachel Happe McEnroe – A few weeks ago two ex-colleagues, one from 15 years ago and one from 3 years ago both friended the same person on FB on the same day (close enough that it came up in my stream somewhat at the same time). Weird.
    • Mike Lewis – Yesterday someone from college reached out to tell me my Aunt is her daughter’s daycare provider. She found out my aunt and I were connected through FB… very small world.
    • Bob Blount – Friend moves to Singapore (I learn about it via one of my social sites). Time goes by, I see a post or two and wish her well. Months later… On the phone with a colleague at my company about business in Singapore. At the end of the call I say, hey if you’re ever looking for an amazing PR Professional I have a friend that lives in Singapore you should talk to. When I tell her the name she says… “no way, I just extended her an offer yesterday”. I would have never said anything had it not seen her post. #smallworld
    • Elysa Rice – I have a good one… In June a person from Social Media Club Dallas came up to me and said “How do you know Lesa R?” to which I responded “umm that’s my step-mom, how do you know her”… her response “we went to 6th grade together in Kentucky” — the Facebook birthday game is what tipped her off that we had both commented on same person’s wall.

While this might be cool, you might ask what’s the point Well, for starters, it means that you might be a little more mindful about how you treat people. You never know when your neighbor, former boyfriend, gym mate or even fellow traveler could be your next boss. Or better yet, your client. This also means that you might be careful about what/how you share on your social networks. That’s not to say that you should be paranoid to the point that you are left sharing pictures with your immediate family and best friend from high school, but rather that you might think twice next time when you decide to share that late night picture of you doing body shots. Or the picture of you with the low cut speedo/skimpy bikini on.

On the positive side, the fact that we are all more closely connected than ever before (and have the tools to see these connections) means that when you are searching for a job, a prospective employee or new customers, the first place to start might be in your own network. Whenever people ask me to help them with a job search, I suggest that they connect with me on LinkedIn and then do a regional or industry search of my connections. For one, this helps me because I can’t proactively remember 5% of the people I’m connected with at any given time (nor do I always know where they work if we’re just friends). Second, if someone is looking for a job at a specific company, they can see if the people I know are connected to the hiring manager at that company.

So what about you? Do you have a story about your (less) than six degrees of separation?

LinkedIn Delivering Some REAL Value

July 1, 2010 By Aaron Strout 6 Comments

You know what I hate? Technology for technology sake. You know what I love? When technology comes along and solves a majore pain point by being smart and anticipating my needs. Guess who just did the latter (okay smarty pants, you knew the answer already because I gave it away in the title). Yup, LinkedIn.

I’ve been a fan of LinkedIn for a while and if my recollection is correct, I’ve been a member since 2003 which is a long time in the life of a social network. While I originally liked LinkedIn for it’s ability to connect me to other smart business folks, the functionality was pretty flat beyond being an online repository for resumes for the first 5-6 years. Over the last 18 months, they’ve really ramped up their efforts and have made the site much more social in nature.

This morning, they ratcheted things up on more notch by offering a great feature which essentially automates the matchmaking around forwarding on job recommendations. Here is a screenshot of the e-mail I received from LinkedIn this morning:

For any of you reading this in an RSS reader without graphic capabilities, essentially the new LinkedIn functionality works this way:

  • Person A pings me with a job request
  • LinkedIn looks through my contacts for people that have that job description in their current or past history
  • I am then offered the ability to forward that description onto my network (see e-mail template on LinkedIn below).
  • Even better, LinkedIn looks into the connections of my connections and offers to allow my connections to forward this description onto their network thus adding value for me AND my network.
The other great thing is that I can delete (or add) additional folks to the e-mail. And as always, I can customize the messaging. In this particular case, I was able to forward this job description from Karen onto five people, five of which I wouldn’t have immediately thought of when I originally received the request had LinkedIn not done the heavy lifting for me.
Kudos to you LinkedIn. It’s functionality like this that is going to keep you relevant and in business for a long time. Keep up the great work!

Hootsuite: Morphing from Twitter Client to *Badass Social Media Dashboard*

November 24, 2009 By Aaron Strout 1 Comment

While I don’t personally use social media dashboard/tool, HootSuite, I have a number of friends and colleagues who do. At some point, I plan to give it a try. To that end, I do take a personal and professional interest in knowing as much about the spectrum of social tools and networks as possible, particularly since I’m on the hook for staying on top of these things for work and for the weekly podcast I do with Jennifer Leggio of ZDNet (note: live interview on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show coming with Hootsuite founder, Ryan Holmes, on January 14).

When I found about some of the latest features that Hootsuite was announcing this morning (9 AM PT), I couldn’t resist at least spending a couple of minutes letting the folks that read this blog know about it. For a more thorough review, you can check out Hootsuite’s blog or Mashable, but for the “quick-n-dirty version, see below…

What’s new:

  • Integration with Facebook, LinkedIn & Ping.fm
    • Users may now update Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles from one location
    • According to HootSuite they are the only Twitter client which allows you to schedule updates for these individual social networks
    • Users may manage social profiles for multiple accounts
    • Users can now read your friends’ Facebook and LinkedIn updates and view in-line Facebook comments within HootSuite
  • Direct integration with LinkedIn (this is a big one in my mind)
    • As a result of LinkedIn opening their developer API over the weekend (more on this from Jeremiah Owyang here), HootSuite jumped in (and to my knowledge) is the first to have integrated direct LinkedIn status updates
  • HootSuite is one of the first clients (I believe that Seesmic is the other) that allows users to manage lists. Users may now:
    • Create lists by dragging and dropping users into columns
    • Import lists you’ve already created & save them as a column in HootSuite

Clearly, Hootsuite is working hard to stay in front of the everchanging landscape of social tools and functionality. For that, they are to be applauded. How long can they keep up with this frantic pace? Who knows, but I like the way CEO, Ryan Holmes thinks. When asked for a quote on Hootsuite’s latest release, he replied…

This update sees HootSuite morphing from Twitter client to badass social media dashboard. We’re constantly listening to our users to hear what they want. Beyond that, we’re thinking about what they might want that they haven’t even imagined yet. We think about these things and then try to make them a reality.

Anyone that knows me at all will recognize that Ryan’s words are music to my ears. Congratulations to the folks at Hootsuite. I look forward to hearing more!

LinkedIn Goes Facebook

November 5, 2008 By Aaron Strout Leave a Comment

Got this e-mail from LinkedIn today (see below). I’ve know this was coming for a while but it was nice to see that LinkedIn is realizing that social networking and is ultimately about engagement. While LinkedIn was good for a while at serving as place to connect online and create an online resume, it was not a good place to really engage with one another. Now they are taking a page out of Facebook’s playbook and adding some “social” features.

Today we’re announcing many more ways to interact with your network on LinkedIn. Whether it’s a new way to create projects and collaborate, share information, customize your profile, or gain key insights, the new LinkedIn Applications deliver.

Click here and you’ll be able to add applications that enable you to:
Work collaboratively with your network.

  • Box on LinkedIn: Share files and collaborate with your network.
  • Huddle on LinkedIn: Private workspaces to collaborate with your network on projects.

Share information and keep up to date with your network.

  • Amazon on LinkedIn: Discover what your network is reading.
  • TripIt on LinkedIn: See where your network is traveling.
  • SixApart on LinkedIn: Stay up to date with your network’s latest blog posts.


Present yourself and your work in new ways.

  • Google Docs on LinkedIn: Embed a presentation on your profile.
  • SlideShare on LinkedIn: Share, view and comment on presentations from your network.
  • WordPress on LinkedIn: Promote your blog and latest posts.


Gain key insights that will make you more effective.

  • Company Buzz by LinkedIn: See what people are saying about your company.

If you want to check out these features, here’s the link.

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