Touch base and Social Netowrk

PierG,

Great question...  A lot of us are still trying to sort this stuff out.  I think of "touch base" as personal, one-to-one.  

For me, it depends on the nature of the social interaction, and the "relationship."   If it's public, it's not touching base:  commenting on someone's status on Facebook isn't really a substitute for a one-to-one correspondence.  Writing on their wall, sharing something of professional interest, is more akin to the MT touch base email.  Having a dialog on their wall regarding a job change, that's touching base.  

Twitter, by virtue of its public nature, is never a substitute for "touch base."  Twitter is a broadcast medium.  

Neither email nor social networking can match a phone call, of course.   And I admit freely that I'm not as diligent in touching base as I should be.  So in that sense, Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, Yammer, etc, are better than nothing.  But it's not touching base, unless it's personal.  

John Hack

...not a substitute for staying in touch.

I find it hard to stay in touch more frequently than every few months with 200+ people. For example, a number of people in the MT community have joined my LinkedIn profile. We send email periodically but do not exchange information and "add value" with each interaction...sometimes it's a simple "I'm OK and hope you are too."

In my view, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Keep building relationships--it is amazing the serendipitous events that occur.

I plan to take my contacts off of facebook and linkedin and put them in my outlook contacts and work with them that way.