Virtual team leaders are becoming more and more interested in the concept of “weak ties.” When you have a remote, distributed,  or hybrid team, it becomes especially important to connect coworkers who don’t work directly on projects together and do not have the same ability to connect like they did when everyone was working together in the office. 

A weak tie can be an engineer and a content writer, a New York-based employee and an LA-based employee, or anyone who doesn’t overlap frequently on virtual meetings. You all work for the same company, but your projects rarely overlap.

Virtual speed networking is a great way to strengthen  those weak ties and foster genuine connection. It’s a low-cost, worthy investment that can have a great impact on employee retention.

You may have attempted a version of virtual speed networking on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack or whichever platform your team uses for meetings. They all have various functionality to pair people up in breakout rooms or make Slack introductions to recreate serendipity. The hard part about running things manually is that virtual meeting fatigue is real; you need to find ways to make things exciting, engaging,  and meaningful.

Enter twine. 

twine makes it easy for Zoom hosts to create connection by enabling advanced Breakout Rooms and speed networking. The app has two options for virtual networking or “speed dating” for employees. Each option boasts an array of features that will work better in certain cases - let’s talk about which option is best for your team. 

twine for Zoom

twine for Zoom is the very first Breakout Room app built right in Zoom. The interface allows meeting hosts to pair up employees for timed, back-to-back conversations based on set rules.  

With the click of a button, hosts can pair engineers with writers, operations with sales, US employees with international employees, mentors with mentees… the app can even pair people based on common interests.

Rather than manually moving event attendees from one breakout room to another, twine for Zoom works seamlessly in your existing Zoom meeting. Hosts don’t have to do any pre-planning (if you’ve ever tried to create specified Breakout Rooms, you know how time-consuming this can be!), and participants simply join the meeting and start connecting with each other.

The structured, timed conversations allow for engineered serendipity to take place. Employees are more likely to share weekend activities, personal news, or celebrate milestones in this setting. When employees can connect on a deeper level - beyond what work they’re doing, they’re more likely to feel connected and engaged.

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twine for web

If your team doesn’t use Zoom as the primary meeting platform, that’s okay! The same matchmaking functionality exists on our web app, twine. 

Our virtual speed networking platform pairs or groups participants for timed conversations complete with customized icebreaker questions, ability to collaborate by sharing screens, activities, videos, or images , and customizable intro videos that set the stage for your team’s conversations.

For examples of how we use twine to connect employees each week, follow this Twitter thread.

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If you’d like to learn more about how either platform can help you run virtual networking experiences, head to our website for more information and detailed case studies. 

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