Bowling Alone on Facebook

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Bowling Alone, the 2000 book by our Kennedy School colleague Robert Putnam, was an unwitting inspiration for our company's founding two years ago. At that time (late 2006/early 2007), I told prospective employees, partners, investors, anyone who would listen that I believed we were in the earliest phase of proving Putnam's thesis (technology was separating people, leading to less social capital) at least a little wrong. While I agreed that technology (TV, AC, suburbia, etc.) had done much to separate American families and communities in the last 50 years -- technology, social technology in particular, could have AND WAS having the opposite effect.

Today, I believe that more than ever -- which is why I found it more than a little ironic to read the results of a new survey that found that bowling was the fastest growing high school sport (up 17% since 2007) and that participation in the US is at close to all-time highs (an estimated 50 million people bowled at least once in last year).

While Putnam might argue that people are still bowling "alone" (or not in not leagues) -- I would say that they are telling their friends, logging onto Facebook and tweeting about it after -- which is not really alone. The new bowling leagues don't post scores on a cork bulletin board -- they post scores on Facebook, on Twitter, MySpace, etc. causing more buzz, more participation, more bowling and yes, more community. This phenomenon is another great example of social networking and computing creating real, tangible offline action.

Social networking, the Dude and Wii did not create bowling -- it always has been a pretty good mix of social interaction with just a dose of physical activity, often matched with beer and a little gambling -- but it's making it better.

By my rough count, there are more than 10,000 active members of Facebook bowling groups, including "We Know Bowling is a Sport," "Petition to Make 10-Pin Bowling an Olympic Sport" and "After all, my bowling average is over 200."

And during the short time that it has taken me to write this post, there are more than a few pages-worth of tweets including, "Fuck it dude, let's go bowling," "They were playing Violent Femmes and Duran Duran at the bowling alley!" and "OH at bowling alley: "It's pelvic thrust night!" I didn't get a memo about THIS theme!"

And if this resurgence in bowling isn't enough to scare you into some Web 2.0 and social media activity, I am not sure what is.

As if you needed more evidence, check out where I dragged Linda and the kids while visiting upstate NY on Christmas vacation...