3 posts tagged “myspace”

I live and breath consumer Internet namely social networks and media but I keep this personal blog independent of that so that I can reflect on some larger intangible characteristics that make us who we are offline and often compare it with our behavior online. Its not about tools and technology, its about people.

So when I got invited to write a guest post on Techcrunch about a basic question on Twitter, MySpace and what really makes us social, I took up the opportunity to muse there

You can read it here - Is Twitter Turning Into MySpace? or here through Techmeme.

And you can follow me on Twitter here.

Imagine Again: Make Friends, Not Add Them

Mr. Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, made the commencement address at Stanford University on June 17th this year. If you get a moment, I would strongly recommend reading the condensed version from The Wall Street Journal called"The Impoverishment of the American Culture"

Since The Journal online is a walled garden, you can read it here for free.

Here are a few lines that are deep:

• "Adult life begins in a child's imagination, and we've relinquished that imagination to the marketplace"
• "Marcus Aurelius believed that the course of wisdom consisted of learning to trade easy pleasures for more complex and challenging ones"
• "Even family communication is breaking down as members increasingly spend their time alone, staring at their individual screens"

When you club the above article with another independent one on the same in The Journal, Jeffrey Zaslow, titled "The Entitlement Epidemic - Who's Really to Blame", it feels like a weird coincidence since they both refer to the downhill path of our culture and one common thread, as I see it - media.

When it comes to media, there are many studies and reports that many college students and the younger generation are spending more time on the Internet or video games today - TV being the constant variable.

I have been working in the social media space on the Internet for a long time now and it makes me wonder what the ubiquity of sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube etc. are having on the younger generation. There seems to be a paradox since these social media websites:

• facilitate 'staring at their individual screens'
  

  Crosswalk, Portland, OR
• facilitate popularity with many clicks ('Add as Friend') and potentially a false "self-esteem"
  
• facilitate branding and marketing of oneself, which, imho, unfortunately very important in the business world before and frequently, independent of what you deliver
• facilitate relationships that can be empty since now you do not have to make a friend, you 'add as friend'
  
• facilitate bringing an undiscovered individual or group's originality to millions. A form of mass media which until recently was only accessible through rich PR budgets
  
• encourage unlearning, learning to leverage a new form of media
  
• empower anyone to champion a cause, have a conversation and make a change
• facilitate discovery of people that can enrich your life (with careful due diligence)

I find it extremely fascinating since I was in the 'younger generation' in India, where there was only one word - education - that was drilled in to me and my brother growing up. I do not necessarily think that was good either since the word missing was 'choice'. I went to engineering school and he became a doctor.

Now, I get to raise my daughter in a very different 'social' environment full of 'choices'

Imagine: we are not social animals

Mike Kuniavsky of San Francisco has a site called Tired.com and he is ready to "listen" to you.... if you are tired!

The Wall Street Journal covered it 3 days ago here called "'Are You Tired?' A Web Designer Asks.Don't Get Me Started" by Vauhini Vara and it was amazing to learn that in 9 years, Mike has recived 42,000 emails from people telling him their stories! These stories come from parents, kids and surfers and to me it is a very interesting insight into the behavioral trends of America (a personal interest and hobby of mine).

I thought this article tied in well with my prior post here on socializing - online and offline but also was very interesting since from the time I landed in the US (in 1999), one thing that was told to me with emphasis was that America is a very private society and privacy is of utmost importance unlike where I came from - India.

So when I look at online social networks like MySpace, Facebook and trillions other mushrooming every where, I find it a paradox to see the privacy that people care about the most offline is insignificant online. People seem to be ready to befriend total strangers, share any moment of their life through pictures and now even write to an anonymous recipient about their fatigue! If that is not enough, they are also using sites like Postsecret.com or notproud.com to spill their secrets.

To me personally, this seems to be a pure outcome of the fact that people are becoming more and more isolated but instead of actually investing in real offline relationships - which means compromise and sacrifices - are taking the path of least resistance. I am not surprised that the new web is all about user generated content :)

Imagine -  Providing friendship as a service!