I did not know what you pointed out about early Christians. Interesting.

I am a big fan of face to face conversations. And I believe with video (per Gerry Crispin) we can achieve some human interaction in the digital space.

People have always grouped together by common interests. People are gathering in with common interests in common places on the web. And we recruiters should strategically take advantage of this.

Seriously, though, the problem with many virtual affinity groups is that you don’t build true bonds: the kind of bonds that allow you to call favors, extend trust, etc.

During times of social change, affinity groups grow naturally. Think of the Elks, the Rotary Club, Knights of Columbus. There is a strong argument that early Christianity was an affinity group for merchants. The web is one of those times, but the difference is that it will be harder to capitalize on relationships that are built with 144 character strings.

My advice is make sure you take the folks you meet in your virtual third place and meet them in an actual third place before you need them. You could tweet “I need a job now,” but unless you tweet that to real (not virtual) friends, you’ll never get a response.

Jer