How to make Networking Work: Insights from Speeddating

Introduction

Research increasingly indicates that networks play an important role in the way that business is conducted. Wittel (2001) asserts that a new network sociality, a new way of socialising via networking is reshaping not only contemporary business life but also social life in general. Certainly, new networking practices are proliferating. Internet-mediated networks are huge. The social networking sites MySpace and Facebook combined have nearly 83 million members. Meanwhile, in the real world, ‘First Tuesday’ networking events where entrepreneurs and venture capitalists mingle every first Tuesday of a month at informal face-to-face events are flourishing (see: www.firsttuesday.org.uk). A curious cross fertilisation of these networking activities can be witnessed in the rise of speeddating, a popular form of social networking where men and women subscribe online and then meet in the real world to partake in short, multiple dates over the course of one night. This article examines how to be a better networker by observing its practice at speeddating events. It is hoped that by developing networking skills knowledge will be more easily shared and ultimately performance will be improved. By assessing the social interaction among daters in this unusual environment it is hoped that lessons can be learned about how to best network in a social situation, whether with business contacts, potential partners, friends, acquaintances or strangers.

Speeddating Background

‘Three minutes is all it takes to meet the man or women of your dreams.’ So claim the promulgators of the latest dating phenomenon where in a single (no pun intended) night daters can potentially network with more potential partners than they have ever dated in their lives (Foulkes and Jones 2003). This is dating for the hyperreal, rush-rush, busy-busy, no-time-to-indulge-in-the-protracted- process-of-normal-dating era. It first emerged in 1999 in Los Angeles, the curious and original by-product of a brainstorming session heldby Rabbi Yaakov Deyo of Aish HaTorah, an international Jewish educational outreach network, whose aim was purely to promote Jewish marriage (Silverman 2000).

Despite copyrighting the name www.speeddating.com, the idea was widely copied by other companies, eager to cash in on the concept. It quickly crossed the Atlantic, and was ushered into the limelight in 2000 by television’s market movers, Richard and Judy. A media frenzy thus ensued in local and national newspapers which helped speeddating in the UK attain widespread popularity. Today, the speeddating concept has extended far beyond the realm of the Jewish community creating, in the process, a multi-million pound industry that has mushroomed to cater for every proclivity, sexual orientation, race, religion and age. The concept of speeddating is relatively straightforward. In advance (up to two months), speeddaters register and pay online (around £20 currently), to attend an event usually in a stylish bar or licensed restaurant. Though attendance is steady all year round, there is slightly more interest in the springtime when new beginnings seem possible, and less in the dark, dead of winter. Between 20 to 60 daters attend any given event. As long as the split between the sexes is fairly even, the viability of an event is rarely threatened. On the actual night a host coordinates proceedings by setting up the tables, taking the register, dishing out scorecards, pens, name badges, explaining the rules and generally being supportive. The first round of networking begins with the men and women sitting opposite one another at individual tables. Each date lasts for three or four minutes. Naturally, if attendance is down, dates can last a little longer. When the time passes a bell rings, the daters say their goodbyes and the men move onto the next table. After each conversation, participants record whether they would like to see their date again by ticking one of three scorecard options – ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘friend.’ When the formal dating part of the night ends, daters are free to either leave immediately or stay and mingle. At an opportune moment, sometime after the event, daters must visit the speeddating company’s website where they see a list of the men/women they just met and select who, if any, they would like to date. It usually takes a few days for everyone to visit the website, but daters are kept informed via email of any matches that occur. If a man and a woman are matched, they can contact one another via the website to arrange a conventional, and hopefully, longer second date.

Methodology

This networking inquiry is a descendant of the numerous investigations that study networking. I must confess also that this investigation began not as a quest to push forward the boundaries of social networking knowledge, more as an attempt to supplement my meagre salary with a spot of moonlighting. To this end, I found gainful employment with a speeddating company in the autumn of 2003. My role was to host bi-monthly events in Chester, Liverpool and occasionally in Manchester. Nonetheless, speeddating’s serendipitous alignment with my research interests in networking in general, and love in the marketplace in particular, was quickly noted and thus I gleefully embarked on this 2 ½ year project.

Inevitably, it blossomed into a substantial study that has generated over 150 pages of qualitative data. In the main, I employ a three-pronged ethnographic methodology that combines introspective accounts, in-depth interviews and participant observation. I also kept field note journals in which I recorded my observations, interpretations, thoughts and asides, some of which have been incorporated into the empirical analysis that follows. In total, data was continually collected and analysed in a hermeneutic fashion, from September 2003 to February 2006. Introspective essays were solicited, with some difficulty, from five men (aged between 23 and 34 years) and two women (ages 23 and 24) all of whom were both first-time speeddaters and working in professional occupations such as marketing research and IT consultancy. Unstructured interviews and several follow-up interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim with four women (aged between 25 and 30 years) and four men (aged between 29 and 32 years). Again these were all first-time speeddaters and all in professional occupations such as social work and administration. I have hosted upwards of 100 speeddating events in Northwest England for a leading European speeddating company. At each of these events participant observation was extensively employed.

Networking at Speeddating Events

Differences in networking approaches feature prominently in this research, most notable though are the people-generated, gender-specific and situational varieties. With a few unfortunate exceptions, both participating gender sets—the media savvy Cosmo-reading ladies and FHM-loving lads who are bombarded with a daily roster of advice on the dos and don’ts of relationship formation—are acutely socially-attuned to their role as a source of (people-generated) stimuli within each networking opportunity; hence the pre-event apprehension that many interviewees mention. Most, therefore, are reasonably well-drilled in the art of subtle flirtation, of reading and displaying appropriate body language, of dressing to impress, of knowing how to accentuate one’s God-given charm, of displaying suitable interest in the potential partner opposite, of finding and maintaining a common ground with a stranger, of standing out as cool in this classy consumer clique, of being mildly self-deprecating yet retaining a supreme confidence in one’s achievements and position in the world, of not taking oneself too seriously, of knowing when to inject humour and of judging the appropriateness of conversational material. Mustering and mastering these socially acceptable, and to some degree, socially expected networking skills, is not only a prerequisite to obtaining the perfect, the flawless, the ten out of ten network connection, but also underscores the very viability of the speeddating concept, itself built on humankind’s innate, yet complex, communication compulsion. It is interesting to note the importance of visual, auditory and tactile situational stimuli in a basic networking interaction. Notice, for example, the implicit awareness of a succession of visual, auditory and tactile consumer-generated stimuli in the following account:

Laura is quite gorgeous (visual stimulus). We get off to a good start and share a joke (auditory stimulus). I touch her, and she touches me back (tactile stimulus), suggesting we have made a good connection and I’m sure I smiled through the whole of the three minutes. I think the fact that I had drank quite a bit by then may have made the three minutes go better, and I’m sure it was the same for her. I’ll give her a tick.
(Male, 34, Introspection)

Certain stimulating stimuli also tend to be more gender-specific than others. Predictably, male erogenous zones are pricked most promptly by the mere sight of beautiful women in the speeddating arena. Considering too, that it is widely acknowledged that female attendees at speeddating events frequently outclass men in the looks department, it is little wonder then that some men get a little hot under the collar, so driven to distraction are they by the mouth-watering prospect of actually connecting with one of the more breathtaking beauties in attendance. For speeddating men then, the subtle dynamics of conversation are less important than the visual stimulus of the glamorous ladies they see before them:

How they (the women) looked played a big part. There were people I would sit down with and I knew straight away that I wasn’t going to give them a tick just because I didn’t like the look of them and you know most of them were really, really nice and surprisingly intelligent but I knew from the start that it wasn’t going to happen. So yeah, in terms of how they (the women) physically looked I would say that it was probably the, I wouldn’t say the biggest factor, but a very important factor.
(Male, 31, Interview)

Woman, on the other hand, are less swayed by the physical manifestation of the man, less inclined to swoon at his swagger, less moved by his lifetime of gruelling gym sessions than he would undoubtedly imagine. Though women will vehemently deny it, claiming that personality is more important, and although it is politically incorrect to say so, time and time again my research illustrates that, through their probing questions, they quickly see beyond the superficiality of mere male handsomeness. While they steer clear of making obvious materialistic inquiries such as, ‘‘what kind of car do you drive?’’, the abiding prerogative of the female psyche at these events seems to be to establish exactly what he does, and exactly how much money he earns. Necessarily then women are highly attuned to a wide gamut of consumer-generated stimuli. Indeed, not only do the women ascertain the materiality of the men they also check out each other, as the following extracts illustrate:

I think I checked out the women more than the men actually. Just to see what kind of competition there was (laughs).
(Female, 25, Interview)

As I glanced around, the first thing I noticed was the quality of the women. Without exception each appeared pleasant, attractive, and fashionable and if it is possible to judge on looks alone, intelligent. All of them were chatting and giggling with radical excitement. It seemed quite obvious that these women were here genuinely looking for potential love.
(Female, 23, Introspection)

Unlike other networking opportunities, such as travelling on a train, where there are a variety of activities people can indulge in (i.e., working, reading, doing nothing, sleeping, mp3-listening), speeddating is different in that its participants are driven by a single impulse—to interact. In this context you might presume then that situational stimuli are, if not redundant, at least less important than networker inflected factors. This finding was confirmed by my research. What matters most at a speeddating event is neither the staff who host the event nor the location of the venue, but, as has just been illustrated, the participants themselves—the boy meets girl network interaction. Nonetheless, certain situational factors, such as an ultra-hip setting, soft lighting and a cool soundtrack, do positively impact on the enjoyment of the service encounter.

My first impressions (of the event) were good. It was relaxed and it was nice to see that lots of people were mixing. I know they were by themselves. Yeah. And I liked the candles. That was good. Not too much lighting. Yeah. You know? It was a nice sized bar. You know? It was a good bar.
(Female, 25, Interview)

It was comfortable. We used the room downstairs which was a bit darker whereas upstairs it was a bit too bright.
(Male, 30, Interview)

Networking in Action

The networking capability of individual speeddaters can often be hampered by their crippling shyness or lack of self-belief. The uncertainty embedded in the unknown outcome of each individual date, therefore, causes many speeddaters to harbour reservations about the likelihood of having successful dates with folks, who after all, are complete strangers. They, in their curiously English mindset, imagine the worst—being stuck in a stilted, don’t-know-where-to-look, don’t-know-what-to-say conversation for three very long minutes. To avoid the manifestation of this scary scenario, astute daters often adopt coping strategies in the belief that they can garner an element of control over the conversational dynamic. One such tactic that attempts to overcome the traditional English reserve, involves devising set questions—icebreakers that can be unveiled should ever a nasty unplanned conversational lull transpire. Many of the interviewees divulged interesting insights into the use of this tactic, for example:

There was one (woman) there who obviously had a set question to start off which was what would I take with me to a desert island, if I could take just one thing. Which was a bit of a, it took me off guard really because it was about the 13th person I had got to. Um. originally I said a football but then I asked if I could take a radio and she said yes so I said I’d take a radio and make a football out of bark. Questions like that just sort of just sort of completely throw me off.
(Male, 29, Interview)

Others tended to go with the flow of the conversations and ad lib as required:

I thought before I went I’m going to have a think about this and think of some really wicked questions. And of course I didn’t have time to think of any wicked questions and when I tried I couldn’t think of anything. Um. So I didn’t really. So I thought, I’ll just have to wing it and pick up on things that they say. So you sort of do this: ‘‘Hello, how are you doing? Having a nice time so far? Oh Good’’. It was like greeting them. ‘‘Welcome. Have a seat’’. I found myself saying quite a lot. It was like interviewing them. ‘‘Hi! Have a seat’’. You know.
(Female, 28, Interview)

Nonetheless, braving the rocky waters of the dating world, however well-prepared you think you are, often involves straying onto some manifestly unpredictable terrain:

The next woman offers me a massage and says she will wear a cat outfit for me, but I decline.
(Male, 23, Introspection)

The next question I received was something else. ‘‘So if I was wearing edible underwear, what part would you eat first?’’ She asked calmly. I spayed my drink out of disbelief. I pointed out to her that topics of a sexual nature were frowned upon but she was insistent... she was nuts.
(Male, 24, Introspection)

The best speeddaters then are decidedly nimble, like performers at an impromptu jazz festival. They instinctively know how to play the quick-step fandango of speeddating. They respond perfectly to every pull, prod and provocation of those they date. They know how to work a room, spout fatuous talk on demand, tell of triumphs and travels, and are invariably brave, recklessly truthful, smart, funny and entertaining. While these sagacious guys and gals employ the obvious tactics of appearing to be energetic, appropriately dressed, hardworking, gently self-deprecating, and always good for a laugh, they also utilize other ways of wooing that involve conversation steering. Women, as a rule, for instance, relish the edge that being in the position of interviewer gives them (since they are always seated when the men approach their table) and use it to their advantage. One says:

I was glad that I was at the table first. I found that I was leading the conversations... which was good, purely because I didn’t want to give too much of myself away. I could kinda control it.
(Female, 25, Interview)

The content of speeddating networking opportunities frequently focus on the unusual nature of speeddating itself. ‘‘What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?’’ being a refrain of seemingly endless mirth that always leads to wide-ranging philosophical discussions about the pros and cons of the networking event:

By the second half (of the evening), particularly, of the night I was kind of starting off the conversations with, ‘Are you enjoying yourself? Because I am!
(Male, 32, Interview)

Heather was quiet and seemed shy and nervous. We chatted about our anxieties about the speeddating idea and what we thought so far. She suddenly blurted out a list of things that she had noticed. It was almost as if she needed to get them off her chest before she exploded. As I moved on I had a huge sense of well being—feeling that I had just maybe helped her in some way to enjoy her evening a bit more.
(Male, 24, Introspection)

An observable variation on this theme, described by the networking literature as a task-based conversation, is certain to feature at every speeddating event. Questions endlessly explored by men with women (during the ‘official’ 3 min dates), by men with men (during the breaks), and by women with women (during the breaks) include: How should you best tackle the speeddating challenge? Is it best to have set questions or should you simply try to be spontaneous? How does this speeddating firm compare with other speeddating companies in the area? Is this an improvement on alternative ways to find a date (i.e., going to a nightclub)? Of course by posing these questions, and especially by attempting to answer them, these speeddaters, were in effect, generating a positive networking experience which itself fuelled a virtuous circle of conversation that escalated, creating a veritable Holy Grail of positivity that permeated the entire proceedings.

Consequences of Networking

This study of speeddating clearly illustrates several critical networking consequences. The first consequence acknowledges that while a safe environment is undoubtedly important, without the added risk, the fear of falling flat on one’s face, speeddating would ultimately be much less enjoyable. Hence the nervous laughter, the hyperconfidence of some men, the sheepishness of others, the rush to the bar for a calming drink, or to the bathroom mirror for final adjustments, the dependence on friends for support and the tentative glances around the room.

Before the speeddating event I imagined it to be a really comical light-hearted night out. However, on the evening of the event I became very nervous at the thought of having to speak to 20 strangers. I found myself wondering if what type of individual attends a speeddating event? Would I be entering myself into a lonely hearts club full of bitter divorcees and desperate idealists wanting to meet Mr or Ms Right?
(Female, 24, Introspection)

An unexpected facilitator found at most successful speeddating events that helps to overcome this trepidation, is the presence among the participants of a fall guy or girl. Some poor floundering fool, a social reprobate of sorts who gets it all wrong, or perhaps drinks too much, or tries too hard or too little. Someone who becomes an unfortunate figure of ridicule. Someone who gives everyone else something to talk about. Someone who essentially, by dint of the favourable contrast, puts the efforts of average punters on a par with those of consummate charmers, cool Casanovas, making them think, whether rightly or wrongly, ‘‘Hey, at least, I wasn’t that bad!’’ A further consequence of networking at speeddating events is that it often banishes pre-existing stereotypes. It may seem like cliché, but participants often discover that each man or woman they meet represents a different aspect of the male or female psyche, running the gauntlet from shy and insecure, to aggressive and confident. Despite their worst fears commonly daters conclude that although these people each have their own unique flaws, they are all fundamentally decent people. Such an enlightening networking experience can powerfully restore people’s faith in the good nature of humanity and in doing so leave a warm afterglow, as the following quotations illustrate:

I have told people it is good fun and not at all a daunting prospect as it seems at first. So, yeah, I told them it was a good experience and they weren’t all geeks; they were quite normal apart from the one guy at the end. You know? I thought you would get geeks but you get normal people.
(Female, 25, Interview)

I realised how easy it really is to delve deep into people’s lives and emotions, even though they were complete strangers. The 3 min limit meant that no topic seemed taboo. I was also astonished at people’s honesty and openness.
(Male, 24, Introspection)

Another major consequence of networking is the general feeling of well-being speeddating events generate. Nine times out of ten it functions as a confidence booster. Indeed, long before the evening’s end, the entire room breathes a collective sigh of relief. The initial edge, noted at the beginning, dissolves. It is quickly replaced, especially as the drink continues to flow, with a giddy, flirtatious, good time atmosphere. This intensifies as the night progresses such that by the end, even with hundreds of romance or rejection questions still unresolved (remember beyond an intuitive understanding, the rules dictate that you do not declare intentions at the event), everyone has fallen in thrall, perhaps a little with the daters they just met, but more so with themselves. They go about unstoppably smiling in this mood of hyperflirtation, a feeling that some say stays with them for days. You see they have faced up to their fears of failure, rejection and humiliation and come through unscathed.

I must say that I came away from it feeling really quite a lot better in myself. And felt a lot more positive about going out and speaking to people generally which I found a good feeling—as though I was quite keen to go back and do it again. And I certainly wouldn’t feel under a great deal of pressure if I went again. I would feel as though I was going to do something that I enjoyed the last time.
(Male, 32, Interview)

It was great fun and, you know, slightly scary in that rollercoasterish kind of way. You know kind of a good scary. You know, what does everyone think of me? Wondering what do I think of other people? So it is a test of your social skills and to some extent your social acceptability. And I don’t mind, you know, I got a few ticks, you know what I mean? Shows I’m alright doesn’t it?
(Female, 30, Interview)

Additional Findings

Planning

How networkers plan for their network interactions was interesting. For instance, prior to the actual event, speeddaters invest a considerable amount of energy and expense selecting their dating outfits, styling their hair and, as we have seen, thinking deeply about their tactics; some even going as far as adopting a new persona. Indeed, one of the attractions of speeddating frequently mentioned by the interviewees was precisely that speeddating provides the freedom to reinvent the self for a night, to start afresh with people that know nothing of the daters troubled, embarrassing or simply boring history. Going under a pseudonym, for instance, was common, as was outright lying either to improve your chances or just for the heck of it. Certainly bending the truth or at least shaping it in order to cast oneself in the best possible light, just as people readily do in interviews is common speeddating practise, as the following extracts make plain.

I was a ‘teacher’ for the evening. Um, probably because I’ve got my little qualification in it and it is what I wanted to do. An accounts assistant, which is what I actually qualified in, is pretty boring as you would expect. I didn’t bother to use that.
(Male, 30, Interview)

I talked about what I did socially and built up the interesting side and played down going to football every week. So I sort of played that down. And I always made sure that I mentioned the ice climbing because I thought, well, that would be something that when they’re writing down stuff that would stick. So that was a deliberate tactic. I hadn’t thought about it before hand, but when the first person I met was talking about things I did outdoors, so I said ‘‘oh I do a bit of ice climbing’’ and she sort of got really interested in that and I thought oh that’s something that I will try to ensure that I mention throughout. So yeah definitely playing up certain things and playing down certain things.
(Male, 31, Interview)

I was in the situation where I found myself pretending to never drink and to read as one of main pastimes. It was by no means to impress the potentially creepiest guy in the entire room, just for some reason it seemed appropriate. The Lord of the Rings can’t be much different from the film can it?
(Female, 23, Introspection)

The insights into this planning process reveal how customers draw on their personal skills and knowledge to prepare for the main point of the event, meeting a mate. In this context, understanding this planning process gives insights into how an organisation might help customers to prepare more effectively and shape a positive outcome. For example, many of the daters display a lack of selfconfidence about how to market themselves. Currently the only help provided by the organisation is a ‘relaxing’ environment with a ready supply of alcohol, a list of pointer questions, and online access to the dos and don’ts of speeddating. More creative options could include personal presentation skills sessions prior to the event on such topics as colour consultancy, body language and dressing for success (the colour red, apparently, is a sure fire winner for women).

‘Role’ and ‘performances’

Part of understanding the planning process discussed above involves clarifying the ‘role typologies’ and ‘performances’ selected by the individual daters. There are a variety of speeddating roles one can adopt. Men can become, or at least be classified as, the womaniser, the workaholic, the mummy’s boy, the gym addict, the emotional cripple, the academic, the love rat, the boss, the old man, the funny thug, or the weirdo; while women can become the princess, the gold digger, the bimbo, the loud mouth, the mothering type, the slapper, the vamp, the bunny boiler or the woman of your dreams. Take your pick! Speeddating is clearly viewed by participants as a performance ‘‘among ‘actors’ who adjust as best they can the ‘expressions’ they ‘give’ and ‘give off’ so as to convey the impression that they are what they claim to be’’. The excerpts below illustrate speeddaters preparing to don the speeddating stage, selecting an appropriate role, and rehearsing the performance of their dating debut.

It is sort of a decision of making an effort but not too much of an effort. I mean if I was going out on a proper date or if I was trying to impress someone I would have made a real effort. Um, so, you know, decisions about what you wear, and what you do with your hair and whether you shower and that sort of thing all comes into play. Marketing yourself and the appropriate level. If you make too much of an effort then it looks like you are being desperate.
(Male, 31, Interview)

My thought processes were (laughs) very long and complicated. There was a lot of discussion with friends at work about what exactly I would wear and what would give off the right sort of impression because I felt like I had an inkling that it might be cold... But my work friends were saying ‘‘You can’t were long sleeves. For God’s sake. You can’t do that. You cant cover up, everything up that’s ridiculous! ... Show them some flesh’’. And so I thought ‘right ok’ and I thought of a vest but with quite broad shouldery bits and a v-neck—so not to covery-up but not too exposed—with just a snug pair of jeans and a pair of boots.
(Female, 28, Interview)

The detailed focus on networking in this context reveals a set of skills and qualities that result in the creation of a successful speeddater. In a related paper on the speeddating phenomenon I identified these skills as self-confidence, sagacity and courage.

Competition versus Cooperation

An as yet under researched aspect of networking is the paradoxical cooperation of people in a competitive service environment—otherwise known as co-opetition. At a typical speeddating event, men and women know that their principle competitors are other members of the same sex. Prior to the event the men and the women, in particular, scrutinise the not only the opposite sex but also the competition:

There is definitely a sense of everyone trying to look like they’re not checking everyone out but they are checking everyone out.
(Female, 28, Interview)

I suppose I was sort of thinking of (the other men) as competition. You sort of look at ugly blokes and think ‘‘this will be a doddle then’’. But I don’t think I saw myself quite as in competition as some of other people that were there, who were making a real effort, and you know afterwards when everyone was having a drink you know they wandered in and joined in on other people’s conversations.
(Male, 31, Interview)

I think I checked out the women more than the men actually. Just to see what kind of competition there was (laughs)...
(Female, 25, Interview)

Yet it is these same competitors that they rely upon for friendship and support in order to ease the anxieties, concerns and apprehensions experienced during a typical speeddating event. Interestingly, we observed that men found it most difficult to square the clash of competition with cooperation. The women, in contrast, had no problem befriending other women. Perhaps it is that the speeddating scenario is such, that the men knew they were being, to use Desmond Morris’s (1977) term, Manwatched, and as such were unable, or too self-conscious, to play the game that anthropology has observed in all male primates of jostling for Alpha male status.

Consequently the extent of interaction between the men, bar those that came with friends, was minimal. On the subject of which, despite the we-are-all-in-this-together, you-look-out-for-me, I-look-out-for-you camaraderie, there is a healthy competition between friends to win the most dates. On the surface these are casual contests, but underneath these are life or death assessments of their attractiveness and desirability. To minimise the damage daters often resort to self-serving attributions whereby good outcomes are internalised and poor outcomes are externalised. For example, if David gets ten matches and Brian gets only three, Brian can easily justify his poor showing by claiming that it had nothing to do with him personally. On the contrary, it can be attributed to the short-sightedness of the women who knew he was out of their league. The dater below expresses similar sentiments:
I ticked this, um, dentist who had been living in a part of France I knew quite well. We only talked about France. I mean she was, she was quite attractive, probably of the women there she was the best catch because she obviously had a bit of money, she was smart, she was making a bit of an effort. She wasn’t bad looking, she wasn’t stunning. I ticked her and she didn’t tick me. She was a bitch (laughs).
(Male, 31, Interview)

Conclusion

It is immediately obvious that speeddating has lessons for excelling at networking. Clearly, the process of networking is more complicated than one might at first imagine. There are many variables such as those created by the type of people present, their gender and situational influences, the roles they adopt, that affect how networking is undertaken. The frameworks used for the discussions of the findings (stimuli, manifestations and consequences of networking), and the additional insights generated (planning, roles and performances and competition vs. cooperation) provide bases for further research on social networking.

References

Morris, D. (1977), Manwatching: Field Guide to Human Behaviour, London: Jonathan Cape.
Silverman, E. (2000) “SpeedDating: A Lap Around the Social Circuit,” The Washington Post, 26th March: 6.
Wittel, A. (2001), “Toward network Sociality” Theory, Culture & Society, 18(6), 51-76.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What are the benefits of being a good social networker?
2. Are there any potential pitfalls and problems that that one can encounter in attempting to socially network?
3. What strategies can you devise to ensure a networking opportunity goes well?
4. Should you abide by any rules when attempting to network with individuals?