The Social Age sees us connecting, sharing, working and leading in online spaces. But it’s a mistake to think that the real change is in the technology. It’s not: it’s about the sociology.

The technology deals transactionally: it can make links and traffic files. But the real change is in how large, cohesive and purposeful our communities are.

It’s important to understand this from an organisational perspective, because if we mistake technology for sociology, we will likely spend our time, effort and resources in the wrong place.

We maintain both weak and strong social ties: the people in our sphere of hearing are our weak connections. The totality of people in our networks: the people who know our name (or, maybe just our Twitter handle). Our strong social ties are those to our friends, the people whose lives we impact more meaningfully.

Social technology has done two things:…