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Where personal connections lead to professional alliances.
There is growing evidence to support claims that online social networking services (SNS for short) are fast becoming the most powerful networking tools available today for independent entrepreneurs and small business owners.
In fact, those who aren’t plugged into these online services are quickly finding themselves left behind by their better-connected, hyper-networked colleagues and competitors.
An online SNS is the virtual equivalent of a regular face-to-face networking event. Only with an online SNS, networkers are mingling 24 hours a day – even seven days a week. Their profile is always working for them. In addition, online networkers can send and receive interview requests at any hour of the day, evaluate potential business partners before deciding to meet face-to-face, find like-minded individuals at the touch of a key, and much more.
Organization learning theories suggest there are two ways humans handle knowledge. One is known as a 'contribution level', in which a person takes his or her knowledge and makes it available to a community or system. And the other is known as a 'multiplier level', in which the knowledge that is shared is then reshaped by a community, whereby the cumulative knowledge becomes greater than the individual parts.
An example of knowledge at the contribution level is a blog. A blogger writes an idea and contributes his or her opinion to the system. A community of blogs would be an example of knowledge used in a ‘multiplier level,’ in which a community of individuals read others people’s posts, add in their own knowledge and then build something new with the result.
What is true of learning organizations is true of online communities in general.
Knowledge without community cannot be developed to its fullest capacity. Community without knowledge is devoid of direction. Content without community cannot achieve its full impact. Community without content is empty. It is only through the joining or fusing of these elements that the full advantages of both worlds may be realized.
The QLN platform is a model for a new generation online community. Quantum Leap is a system designed to enhance the power of social networks by using interactive digital media to bring together people who share similar values. As a result, we can become better informed, better organized and connected to each other in the way we were meant to be. | 
