How social networking destroyed one person-year of productivity in a mere two days

One of the best places I’ve ever worked was Miller Freeman. I joined the company in 1990, and left in 1998. The warmth at Miller Freeman – an 90-year-old company – was extraordinary, and that’s where I made some of my dearest friends, including BZ Media co-founder Ted Bahr.

Miller Freeman’s swan song began in mid-1999 when its owner, United News & Media, purchased rival publisher CMP Media. UNM (now called United Business Media) merged the two together, keeping the CMP name – and the CMP management team. By 2000, MFI was gone.

Miller Freeman was gone, but not forgotten. While many MFI employees now work for CMP, most have scattered to the four winds. Some are still in publishing, others have moved on. Some keep together, however, with annual reunions, which were fueled by a mailing list that one former employee kept, and with an “alumni” Web site that I maintained for many years. Of the thousands of people who passed through MFI’s doors, about 200-250 were on our lists.

After our most recent reunion – a holiday cocktail party in San Francisco – I decided to replace the old static “where are they now” Web site with an interactive social network. For a platform, the choice was Ning, a free service. My inspiration, in part, for the “afterMillerFreeman” social network came from similar ones for other major publishers, including two I belong to, “afterIDG” and “afterCMP.” There’s also an “afterZiffDavis,” which I’m not a member of. The credit for suggesting the construction of afterMillerFreeman goes to former MFIer Kathy Bruin, who suggested it to me on Oct. 30, 2007.

The site, which launched on Dec. 2, succeeded far beyond our wildest dreams. After setting up the network and sending invites out to our small mailing list, a few people joined. Then a few more. Then the floodgates opened.

We blew past 100 members in two days, and people were already commenting (on the social network and in bemused emails) that none of the participants were getting any work done. They were busy leaving messages for old friends, uploading photos, sharing stories, setting up special interest groups for various departments and offices — and logging into “afterMillerFreeman” every few minutes to see who else had joined. It was tremendous.

The site really exploded when a group of former senior executives came into the network – as well as a few people who always were social catalysts at Miller Freeman. Within a week, we’d passed 200 members, and to put the icing on the cake, members were inviting other members.

Now, less than three weeks later, at least 10-15 new members sign up each day. The message traffic on the social network is incredible. We have over 350 members, and there are more than 200 invitations pending – invitations that new members were sending alone. As physicists would say, we’ve achieved critical mass.

I belong to quite a few social networks, but none of them has the vibrant energy of “afterMillerFreeman.” That says something about this community and its people, and the fact that an online community works best when it’s based on a real community – not just a few people with a common interest, but people who genuinely like each other, and who want to share their personal stories.

Our next face-to-face reunion is going to be huge, drawing folks that have never attended those events. That will be the best social network success of all.