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July 20th, 2008
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Around Town

Get the social scoop

By Beth Potter
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
April 30th, 2008 issue

You can’t smell a person on Facebook.

Could be a serious disadvantage in the social networking world, right?
After all, you can’t get any olfactory cues (or aural ones either) to help you decide whether you want to do business, go for a drink after work or even get involved romantically if the only things you know about him/her come from a computer.
That’s backed up by studies done by various universities in the United States about pheromones and male attractiveness to females, as well as by business studies.
But it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a built-in disadvantage to finding out about events online and/or meeting people that way. (Witness the huge explosion of Facebook, MySpace and other such social networking sites in recent years.)
So I was still a little skeptical about a “Meetin Prague” event at Fat Boy’s bar in Old Town April 25, which I thought at first was only listed on Facebook. After all, a friend had to forward the time and place to my e-mail, because I don’t have a Facebook account. As it turns out, the group, which has chapters in more than 50 cities now, including several in Europe, also has a regular Internet page: Meetin.org/city/meetinprague/index.cfm, which lays out various events and the group’s credo, which stipulates members look for friends, not new people to date.
Still, many of the links on the Web site seem to go to password-protected Facebook pages, which started making me feel a little bit like a social pariah all over again.
So I asked other folks at the Fat Boy’s meet-up why they prefer Facebook offerings. After all, Prague already seems pretty much like a constant party, with two or three scheduled social events almost every night of the week (never mind all of the concerts, operas and plays, movies and other entertainment offerings). Is it really necessary to invest more time into looking at a computer screen to join the crowd?
David Mitchell, 21, a global management worker at DHL in Prague, says yes. Foreigners have a better chance of fitting in if they use the right tools, he pointed out.
“In a group like this, you know you have one thing in common, at least. You all speak English,” said Mitchell who came to Prague relatively recently.
Kathleen Renehan, 24, agreed. The teacher moved to Prague in October.
“It was hard to meet people,” Renehan said. “Now it’s easy to find people with similar interests.”
Others seem to use the group as a way to make sure they’re on the cutting edge of trendy, including Quinn Vansteelant, 38, of Belgium.
“I don’t use it that often, but everything happens on the Net these days,” Vansteelant said.
His friend Sasha from Germany, who declined to give us his last name, also touted the convenience factor.
“I have to have Facebook to stay in contact with people I don’t see,” Sasha said. “Otherwise, I’m totally against its privacy policy.”
I agree. Who wants to have to keep on deciding who is a “friend,” and who is not, before putting pictures online? I can understand the idea of keeping in touch with a group of people by putting a generic comment on Facebook, but I also like more personal interaction — things like the chance introduction from a colleague that leads to a personal friendship.
For self-described “IT geek” Vishal Vachhani, a business analyst at Tesco, the online world and the real world mesh a lot better when he can use Facebook to socialize. And that’s something we have heard from other Facebook junkies as well — they get so wrapped up in their computers that it’s easier to make connections that way as well.
“All of my interest is work, but with this, we just organize parties,” Vachhani said.
Maybe high-tech networking isn’t so bad after all.

Beth Potter can be reached at bpotter@praguepost.com


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