There's nothing like having your very own personal experience illustrate the immediate power of the social graph--and the power of activity streams.
This morning, Â I got the news I had been laid off from
Yahoo! at about 11 am. Around noon I posted a note to my blog, a note to my
Facebook status, and a tweet to my
twitter stream.Â
By 5 pm, there were 44+ comments on my blog post, 21 comments on the FB note, 15 FB emails, 20 Yahoo emails and 20 Gmail emails. Plus perhaps 6 twitter-derived notes.Â
That's over 100 responses generated within 6 hours of the actual occurrence. Â
To me, that's amazing--and also a smaller scale, real time example of how quickly the social graph allows news to spread--and how easy it is now for people to communicate.
One interesting observation was that all the emails  received were from friends and colleagues and people I personally know, supporting the concept that email is an essentially 1:1 private medium (as in strangers are cautious about sending email). Â
In contrast, the people responding to me  were more diverse in their relationship to me.
 Many of the blog comments were from friends, but a significant percentage were from blog readers or people I have not meet face to face.Â
On FB, the wall and post comments ranged across friends, acquaintances, readers, with at least 50% from people I do not know well. Â To me, this illustrates that one aspect of the social graph is the desire and ability for people to demonstrate affinity and support with people they *like,* but may not know well in the real world, and yet feel connected to through blogging, twitter, etc.
Anyway, as I read through all the great notes, calls to action, and expressions of support--all of which I very much appreciate (and need/want) I was struck by how much social media tools provided this situation with what felt like  almost real time communications--and how much smaller and more intimate the world feels because of the speed and directness with which we can now interact when something happens.
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