Optimising your social network - a glossary

Here is a list of the terms I use when writing about social networks:


Social network - the humanity around me - both online and offline. I like to think of my social network as comprising three different kinds of social group:

• Social convoy - the people I go through life with. People who are important to me, and for whom I am important, even if I don't see them often 
• Personal community - people I interact with in the course of my daily life, be that at work, school, college, in my neighbourhood or as a result of other stuff I do
• Inspiration network - people who give me stimulus and ideas

Activities that add contacts to our network

• Scanning - looking out for people who it might be useful to be connected to 
• Collecting - adding people to my network as a result of making preliminary contact either virtually or face-to-face 
• Reacting -  responding to collecting or connecting approaches - deciding how to respond to the requests or suggestion from someone else
• Reaching - asking people I know to connect me to others

Activities that change the connections between people in our network

• Connecting - introducing two people in my network who don’t know each other (maybe in response to reaching by someone else, or as a result of mapping)
• Catalysing - bringing about a change in the relationship between other people in my network (for example by encouraging them to start a conversation with each other)
• Mapping - studying the structure or shape of our network to decide where and how new connections could be made or new conversations started

Activities that contribute to the thinking of people in our network

• Firing - starting a private conversation to get people sharing ideas
• Fusing - adding people to a conversation 
• Broadcasting - inviting people in a network to contribute ideas on something
• Tuning - attending to the conversations that people in the network are broadcasting
• Digging - passing on ideas from one connection to another
• Moulding - refining, reframing or interpreting an idea for someone else
• Burying - closing down or choosing not to pass on ideas from one connection to another
• Resourcing - giving time to someone to help them develop ideas
• Recruiting - asking people to give time to help with the development of ideas