Home Stretch

So, I am almost done with Mr. Shirky's book. Once again, I will focus on one idea that really drew my attention. I don't want to write a summary of the pages, because that is not very interesting.

So, around page 230 or so, Mr. Shirky was still on the topic of Meetup.com and why it is so amazing. I agree that it is a pretty great service that certainly has a group of people who would be much more lonely without it.

During this particular section, Mr. Shirky's emphasis was on the success of specific groups on meetup and what characteristics the successful groups shared. He realized that a successful group must be one that is well-balanced between specificity and generality. A group that consisted of males from Boston, MA would not be all that interesting. Some of the members would certainly feel a connection to some of the other members (for reasons other than their mutual residence), but the vast majority of members would feel hardly any connection at all to the other members.

This is because being a resident of Boston does not make people feel as if they share something special. Bostonians may be very proud of their city, but they cannot relate beyond the usual, "oh you are from Boston, too?" conversation. They may both know about a construction project going on (Big Dig) or legislation being passed (gay marriage) but even then, they could run into anyone on the street or in the bar and discuss those topics. Those topics and conversations will not be exclusively generated through a website dedicated to Boston males.

It would also be pointless to create a group for "22 year old white, jewish, males who graduated from Rutgers in 2006 and now live in New London, CT." That would be a group of one, or so. The chance that a group like that would find more than one person in a city the size of New London is too little to justify its creation.

Now, if we shave off a couple of the traits or look to shared interests or hobbies instead of ages, genders, and alma maters, we may find some more useful groups. Groups like the local stay at home moms group are very effective at generating social interaction between people that share common ground able to make them feel specially bonded. They have more to talk about than the town library having a flood or the local school getting new books (although those things may come up). They can share advice, they can provide support, they can discuss their problems, and they can call upon each other for favors. Most importantly, they can be well on their way to finding friends in a group like this. You can certainly find friends in the "Bostonian male" meetup group, but your chances are no greater than if you went to the local bar or walked around the streets.

Meetup helps people find friends with common interests that would otherwise have incredibly low chances of running into one another, but it hardly helps anyone out that wants to find someone exactly like them or someone that doesn't care what kind of person they find.