“What is the difference between social networking v.s. social distancing?”

The notion of social networking was introduced and popularized by The Facebook since 2003.”

Yes, the website that you and I both have an account registered and logged in checking in everyday to know what’s going on with your community.

And yes, out of curiosity, I used to use that site to check my classmates before a new class began and see who took the same course back in university days back in 2006.

It forever re-wrote the definition of “social networking” 17 years ago, from the dormitory on that night after Mark Zuckerberg had an conversation with Erica, initiating the idea of swipe right and left on Harvard female students, and revolutionized the idea of social networking.

After an awful date.

“What’s the notion of social distancing?”

It was from…actually not too long ago a bat infected a human being in a city and then somehow one person who got affected traveled to the another country spreading without conscious and soon after created a domino effect and in two months caused a global pandemic and resulted millions of cases and made the entire world dis-functioned.

Similarly, in 2020, it has also forever re-written the history of how human being interact with each other…Not virtually but physically.

“What do they have common?”

Early Stage

• They both have created a powerful and addictive (Affective) symptom on human being (user experience) that capitalized on new social norms of human interactions. (virtually vs physically speaking.)
• They both built a destructive network effects through one city (one college – Harvard) to another city (colleges in Massachusetts in the United States) then spread worldwide.

Scaling 

• Product (Disease) expansion on new features (Mutation) that fit the consumer (Patient)  needs in the local marketplace and make everyone accessible and connected in the global village.
• World of mouth that continues to accelerate the growth.

“What’s the result as of today?”

Facebook – As of today, the invention and accelerator of social networking powerhouse, has more than 2 billion registered users worldwide, equal to 30%+ of the population globally. However, the number of user growth has reached to a more matured stage and the company has been actively searching for new growth engines for monetization.

COVID-19 – It is still happening and human being haven’t figured out an effective strategy to completely destroy it. It will have far-reaching effect through the rest of the year in 2020 and continue to have major economic impact in 2021 and even 2022.

But the most important lesson and implication for human being to take away is – The health care reform and environmental protection that the global leaders and government officials have been ignorant and haven’t been putting enough effort to enact a long-term strategy and actionable plans.

G7 and G20 should treat these as priorities and follow up, for equality and sustainability.

Wake up 2020, human beings.

Two-Thousand-Twenty years.