When 37 of the top 100 economies in the world, according to 2006 data by total revenue and GDP, are corporations, we can’t count on government to set the rules, can we?Rather, with the knowledge that ……

Thanks for this and your comment. I love your telephone tree example and of course your point is very valid. I would imagine that many of those people reported as not knowing what a ’social network’ might be, really do and are probably part of one themselves. It probably just doesn’t have a name like Facebook, MySpace or Hi5, and probably isn’t online.

Your example reminded me of one from my University days. In those days we had an equivalent of a Facebook, and it was stuck on everybody’s wall in their room - the ‘Table of Faces’. An A2 sheet of paper which had thumbnail pics of everybody in our year with their name, subject, room, extension, birthday and home contact details. It was interesting to see how people annotated this (highlighting their own ‘friend list’ out of this, or making connections between people). They were showing the same behaviours as we see of people in online social networks. Just on a piece of paper stuck to a wall.

Matt

On the matter at hand, you’re right to caveat your response with “without access to the actual wording of the question, etc…” but the fact that roughly half of adults *do* know what a social network is… is pretty astounding, I think

Whatever we may label them, I’m reminded of the fact that we have always had social networks, and used the best available tools at the time, or just those we are most comfortable with - the market, the pub, the club, or in this case, the telephone tree
http://www.nfp2.co.uk/2007/03/15/my-social-network-circa-1987/

Steve