I don't know if it's just Norwich (we tend to be a very friendly place with much more face to face networking than a lot of places) but yesterday I happened to meet two people who I knew only through the online networking media - Linkedin.
Some people are bemoaning the fact that with the advent of e-mails and social media, people will lose their social skills, with less face to face communication taking place.
From what I've seen, social media actually leads to more face to face interaction, especially in a local community.
My meeting yesterday was with someone who had asked to be introduced to me through a contact on Linkedin (there is a formal method on linked in to get people you know to introduce you to people you would like to know).
Whilst we were chatting at the Forum, I happened to bump into another contact who was also having a business meeting at the cafe. The lady he was meeting just happened to be someone I was "linkedin" with but had never met.
It was great to put a "face to a name".
In the last few months there seems to have been an explosion in the use of social media for business - whether this is just in Norwich, I don't know. I have a theory that Norwich / Norfolk is such a small community that things spread quickly. A lot of individuals are linked through the same groups, so there is a lot of overlap in who knows who.
Whatever it is, facebook, linkedin and twitter seem to have taken off big time in Norwich in the last few months and we have some exciting developments of our own coming up - I just can't wait to shout about it.
