Social Networks and the "Luck Factor"

So lately most of my posts have been about Flickr and my project to digitize and make available old pictures. Flickr has interesting capabilities because it is more a "social Networking" site than a picture site. Flickr is attempting to pull together communities linked through pictures.

There are a number of other sites attempting to do similar things; linking people together based upon sports or music or politics. This is part of what people are calling "Web 2.0"; the ability to use the network infrastructure to tie people and information more closely together.

The other social networking site that I make most use of is called Linked In. This site allows me to connect and maintain contact with people I've worked with at previous jobs. It is useful as a Rolodex because when a person changes jobs or email addresses their updates are automatically published to all their contacts. For people like me who are job hunting, there are two great aspects to the site; Recommendations and Introductions. LinkedIn gives me a place to record and publish recommendations from colleagues. If you take a look at my Linked In Profile you will see a number of recommendations that I've gotten; in one step I can point prospective employers to these. Using the Introduction tools, when I have a position I am interested in, I can search LinkedIn for people who work at that company (preferably someone like the VP of Ops in my case) and see if anyone in my network of contacts knows that person (and would be willing to make an introduction).

I'm currently reading a book called The Luck Factor: The Four Essential Principles which attempts to break down the elements of what people characterize as a "Lucky" life. The premise is that luck is not some sort of supernatural blessing, but it is the result of actions, both conscious and unconscious. This premise made complete sense to me; Looking back on the times when I've made lucky or fortunate choices, there was really much more planning, thought and intuition involved than "luck"

The author is a psychologist and studies a population of people who characterized themselves as either Lucky or Unlucky. To make a long story short, he distilled his observations down to this; Lucky people are generally Open, Extroverted and Relaxed (as opposed to neurotic) which results in more opportunities to build and stay connected with a large network of friends, to be open to new opportunities and be relaxed and confident enough to recognize the opportunities and take them.

The first principal he identifies is that "Lucky" people build and maintain a large and vital network which is the first step on the road to "luck". In reading this, the comparisons to LinkedIn and the functions it fills were obvious. Building and maintaining a healthy network of connections is one of the building blocks to a "lucky" break.