The concept of peer-to-peer networking was pioneered as a marketing strategy. The concept of peer-to-peer marketing (P2P marketing) was purposed to initiate marketing with one customer. Once one customer is converted, he or she would explain and recommend the product or service to family, friends, and colleagues. Today, experts have proposed that the peer-to-peer strategy will define the future of marketing. P2P marketing focuses on human-to-human or person-to-person interaction.
At the start of the 21st century, peer-to-peer networking became a platform for academicians. Peer exchange had started centuries ago, as exemplified by citations and referencing systems, and the fight against plagiarism. However, the process of networking was added to peer exchange only recently, pioneered in the fields of education, research, and development. The first volume of the Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications journal was published in 2008, and now it is already in the 38th issue of its 9th volume (Journal no. 12083). According to the journal's Editor in Chief, Xuemin Shen, the journal was designed to collaborate and fosters networking "among academic and industrial communities," who with appropriate applications inspire "state of the art research and socio-economic development."
Launching Peer Networking on Social Circles
The value of peer networking has therefore been embraced as a marketing strategy, and recently, in the circles of research and development by academicians. Mobile application developers have now adopted the concept of networking and transformed it into social relations. Notably, peer-networking applications do not ascribe to the traditions of social media interactions or e-commerce but depict a unique platform for social relations.
Networking apps are designed precisely for the mobile phone, smartphone, and tablets. Only a few peer-networking apps are available in the market today, but their acceptance and usage predict unprecedented success in the art of networking. So what makes peer networking apps unique and as attractive to the public?
Significant Features of Peer Networking on Apps
1. Facilitates Anonymous Social Identity
To begin with, and perhaps the most significant feature of peer networking is the anonymity it allows. Basing peer networking on anonymity is predictably the background upon which all the other features of peer networking are based. While such social media giants as Twitter mandates users to verify their accounts, peer networking allows and facilitates interactions between anonymous peers, without ever imposing or mandating the need for personal identification.
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2. Captivates Your Psychological and Social Needs
Apps for peer networking like Paralign offer a space to relieve your mind, motivate genuine self-evaluation, and journal your thoughts freely and productively. Previous research indicates that peer networking helps people to reduce and eventually conquer anxiety, stress, and depression. Peer networking apps are thus playing a critical role in building your psychological health.
3. Facilitates a Digital Connection of Similar Minds
It is extremely hard to find a person in the mazes of the global society who shares your interests, your perspectives, and most importantly, worldview. The closest you get to that is through social media, where concerns about personal identity and professional profile become a barrier to your true self. You are not likely to post support for a new fashion trend on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook if most of your followers and friends are negatively biased against such a brand. In essence, peer networking helps you meet similar mindsets from the digital universe with whom you can share about the real you, without the enormous limits of the social media. When you cannot match your expenditure with your income, when the budget is unattainable, or when you are having family problems, you will prefer peer networking than the social media.
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4. Overrides Socio-Economic Barriers
Finally, and as discussed above, the society has always aligned with limiting boundaries. Such barriers can be economic, social, and cultural, such as religion, education background, economic class, race, nationality and much more. The same barriers are rife in social media. The world is slowly deactivating traditional social, economic, and cultural ramifications. Peer networking, on the other hand, does not rely on your identity or that of the peer. You prescribe to no social-economic or cultural barrier, and as such, your networking is above demographic profiling. Regardless of your social class, emotion, feeling, behavior, or interests, peer networking holds no barrier when participating with like-minded peers.
Networking is no longer a purely marketing strategy, a career/professional practice, or an exchange of academic knowledge and research. Courtesy of modern mobile application, you can now network even in your social space. Towards the future, it is evident that modern apps are progressively reaching every part of human life. Of interest is how apps are embracing the challenge of making life easier, comfortable, and productively effective. With peer networking, mobile apps have now given the child of academics wings to fly into the social aspects of modern life. What next, you are bound to ask.