31 posts tagged “online and offline”

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

I have spoken about The Cat, The Dog and Web 2.0, blogged about the disconnect of social behavior online and offline and very recently, Jennifer Aniston experienced it first-hand recently.

These 4 minutes explain your social graph

Since I love observing social behavior offline and then online to make some personal notes here, one big one that keeps standing out for me is how different and similar we are socially - online and offline. 

Whether it is through our need to belong ("yearn for contact") by adding friends, instead of making them or our ability to have 100s of friends online but the inability to love our neighbors (no pun intended for the neighborhood here on Vox) or that 25% of Americans have no confidant and the average number of confidants for an American has dropped to 2. 
 
Here are a couple of studies that appeared recently that talk to the differences and similarity:

The Economist: Primates on Facebook
"What also struck Dr Marlow, however, was that the number of people on an individual’s friend list with whom he (or she) frequently interacts is remarkably small and stable. The more “active” or intimate the interaction, the smaller and more stable the group."

The Wall Street Journal Blog: Exploring Twitter Ties
"Consistent with behavior on social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, Twitter users interact with a small number of friends compared with the total number of friends and followers declared."

The Mercury News: "Finding our own little worlds has never been easier" by Mike Cassidy
"I wanted to find myself in the continuum of experiences," Wood, 41, tells me, "where speaking with people was neither good nor bad, but it was superfluous."

It turns out that that superfluous place is almost anywhere in America, depending on how you choose to experience it. With the help of Silicon Valley, we have grown into a society where it's possible to quite literally live in your own little world. So much of what we do, we do alone, even while surrounded by people."

Think of those superfluous conversations that we have with grocery clerks offline parallel to those friends we add (not make) online and the few with whom we interact (the 7 to 20 in the studies above) as those whom we actually meet offline, help, show commitment or drink a beer or two independent of their title or net worth.

We ignore people online all the time - whether its email, a friend request or an @reply on Twitter. As Mike continues to write
"One of Wood's most creative tricks was to rely on what social scientists call "anticipatory disengagement," — in his case putting his cell phone to his ear to avoid conversation.".. or maybe avoid eye contact?

Imagine: The Few, The Real  

I have quite a few posts on online and offline relationships and just recently also talked about it with parallels to a Cat and a Dog, so when I suddenly saw this ad in the midst of one of my favorite shows, 24, I had to:

• 'go online' (Note the irony) and look for the ad
  
• spend some time on the corporate site
• explore their offerings and actually take some time to learn a little about the company

The company is Dentyne and its message is very simple - spend face time with people you care. Dont add friends, make them. Dont collect friends, sustain them. You can write all the 25 Things that do (not) matter but make sure you share that one really important thing in 5 minutes with those you really care about.

The first thing you are greeted with is a message that contradicts what all websites want - leave within 3 minutes:

Here is one of their ads:

If that does not help, sign up for the Free Hug Campaign - I have!

Imagine: "I give free hugs", "I love you" or 'You mean a lot to me" is less than 140 characters even offline 

I love observing people, social behavior and very importantly applying those observations to my professional life in online social networks and media.So when the Zurb guys invited me over, I took to the opportunity to share some of those observations and exchange best practices.

If you care, here is a pretty detailed documentation of that session. I LOVED the visuals they created (below) which speaks to Zurb's excellence in presentation and making words and a few whiteboard scribbles come to life. More of their visuals are here on their Flickr stream.

 

Once upon a time there was a boy who used to sit at Starbucks and read his newspaper - in rain or shine.

Whenever he read the newspaper, there was usually always another guest at the coffee shop who came with his 2 dogs, annoying if I may say so) who would never stop barking - so rain or shine.... or bark.... the boy kept ooooonnn reading.

The boy had 2 cats in his house.

Then one day, he met another boy, who had his own firm called Zurb that allowed living and non-living things to have a desired effect on one another - nope they are NOT a web design company, NOT a graphic design agency. The boy and his team have accumulated a blue-chip roster of clients like Miss Spears herself and Photobucket amongst others. 

Over time, their low-caffeinieted drowsy good mornings led to more excited and passionate discussions. One thing led to another and they decided to talk a little more about The Cat, The Dog and Web2.0 so if you want to get in and share your experience and meet the awesome team at Zurb, here are the details. No experts - only students please.

Imagine: Make Friends, Not Add 'Em

I embarked on a series of blog posts yesterday titled 'I Know What I did the Last Time I was Unemployed' but before I start off on that I need to recognize these 5 professionals.

I hope this would inspire many to respond or reach out to those seeking jobs. I assure you having been in that phase for 3 YEARS and where career sites like Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com or employer sites are like big black holes, a simple email or a few minutes on the phone giving job seekers feedback can bring hope. In times like this, believe me, Hope Can Be a Tactic and a Chase, The Adrenalin Rush!

A significant portion of what had to come together for me was these amazing people who responded to my outreach. I was relatively fresh off the boat from India, unemployed, with a name which spell checkers suggest 'urinal' as the alternative (Take that Barack!) and they were all very busy senior executives. They are:

• Sriram Peruvemba - then a Director of Marketing at Planar and now a VP of Marketing at E-Ink and my first employer ever in the US. I met him offline through a Professor at Portland State University 
• Shripriya Mahesh - then a VP at eBay for Products and now soon-to-become a famous film maker. I 'met' her through LinkedIn. We connected way back in the last downturn and are yet to meet in person - one day!
  
• Rahul Sachdev - then a GM at Siebel and now a VP of Marketing at Intelliden. I 'first' met him through LinkedIn in 2004
• Ajit Pendse - had just sold his last company, eFusion, for $250M and was most recently CEO of Trinity Convergence. I met him offline at a local Starbucks in Portland, Oregon. Ajit was figuring out what to do after selling his company and I was at the other end of the spectrum - figuring out what to do .
  
• Konstantin Guericke - then a co-founder and VP of Marketing at LinkedIn and most recently the CEO of Jaxtr. I met him through LinkedIn when I first 'bumped' into the service in 2003 when they had 40,000 users and I saw its potential. He did not offer me a job right away but fortunately humored my feedback as an early adopter of the service.

Imagine: You CAN make a big difference in someone's life - you just may not know it.

I have always loved and lived by Alan Toffler's quote "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

So when 2008 biennial news consumption survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press came out with their results, it made me reflect a little since I read the print version of The San Jose Mercury News (Business and Technology section only) and almost all of The Wall Street Journal every single day along with many things online.

Being an Integrator - of news, books and people - I started thinking of the Perfect Storm for the main stream media, especially anything in the print.

A few observations that tie into Pew's study:

• Study: Americans [particularly young Americans] reading less than they used to
• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book in 2006 [Some more stats here]
• The Success of Amazon's Kindle
• Literacy Debate: online, R U Really Reading?
• Nicolas Carr's piece in The Atlantic: Is Google Making Us Stupid

Now let us look at the other key findings of the study:

• In spite of the increasing variety of ways to get the news, the proportion of young people getting no news on a typical day has increased substantially over the past decade. About a third of those younger than 25 (34%) say they get no news on a typical day, up from 25% in 1998
• Social networking sites are very popular with young people, but they have not become a major source of news. Just 10% of those with social networking profiles say they regularly get news from these sites

So now if we consider LinkedIn, I see a tremendous opportunity for my alma mater. Considering the fact that its a business network, where knowledge for most at a bare minimum is key to survival - the Traditionalists and Net-Newsers probably make up most of the 26 Million users it has amassed.

It has already made some stragic inroads in that direction recently with a News feature and partnerships with New York Times and BusinessWeek. This is just the very tip of the potential LinkedIn has along with its Company feature and Recommendation Engine.

Imagine: People [primarily] Make News, People Report News and now People Deliver News!

The core theme of this blog is social behavior offline, online. I have written a few posts in the past comparing the online and offline social behavior with The Cat, The Dog and Web2.0, The Online and Offline Social Disconnect, Gordon Gekko's Social Graph.

So when I saw an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times by Peter Lovenheim titled "Will you Be My Neighbor" in the New York Times here,  I was glad that it was not just me who saw what I saw. It underlines some of my observations as an immigrant coming from a culture where all the neighbors (apart from family) knew each other and shared a lot of their lives - offline, synchronous and involved.

You can read the details but here are a few lines from his article that are captivating and at the same time, concerning for our society:

"According to social scientists, from 1974 to 1998, the frequency with which Americans spent a social evening with neighbors fell by about one-third. Robert Putnam, the author of “Bowling Alone,” a groundbreaking study of the disintegration of the American social fabric, suggests that the decline actually began 20 years earlier, so that neighborhood ties today are less than half as strong as they were in the 1950s.

Why is it that in an age of cheap long-distance rates, discount airlines and the Internet, when we can create community anywhere, we often don’t know the people who live next door?"

My response to his Why based on observations and great conversations from my 8 years in America:

• America emphasizes the individual
• America emphasizes independence
• America teaches that destiny is in one's control
• American emphasizes Doing versus Being
• America, generally, measures success financially
• We, globally, still discriminate - color, religion, politics, sex, sexuality, race, country, attire, appearance, net worth, profession
  

I know a few of my neighbors but I know can do better.

Your responses, thoughts?

Imagine: [At least] love thy neighbor

I have had a few posts on charactertics around facing adversity, challenges and playing David like 300, I Like It Rough and then my last post recently on (Pride), Determination and Resilience.

You can imagine how excited I was to read an article by Melinda Beck, from The Wall Street Journal, here on how some very successful household names had to face failure before they became what they are today. The article to me was a "Celebration of Failure"!

• J.K. Rowling's first book about a boy wizard named Harry Potter was rejected by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury, a small London publishing house, picked it up.
• Twenty-seven publishers rejected Theodor Seuss (Dr. Seuss) Geisel's first book, "To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street."
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school varsity basketball team sophomore year.
• Decca Records turned down a contract with the Beatles, saying "Groups of guitars are on their way out."
• Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor who said "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas."

Here are some snippets that I want to make a note to self:

What makes some people rebound from defeats and go on to greatness while others throw in the towel? Psychologists call it "self-efficacy," the unshakable belief some people have that they have what it takes to succeed.

I only think that a few people rebound and most throw in the towel.

Where does such determination come from? In some cases it's inborn optimism -- akin to the kind of resilience that enables some children to emerge unscathed from extreme poverty, tragedy or abuse. Self-efficacy can also be acquired by mastering a task; by modeling the behavior of others who have succeeded; and from what Prof. Bandura calls "verbal persuasion" -- getting effective encouragement that is tied to achievement, rather than empty praise.

Some quotes:

"I've failed over and over and over again in my life. That's why I succeed," - Michael Jordan
"I didn't fail 1,000 times," he told a reporter. "The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps." - Thomas Edison
"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." - Winston Churchill

Two big failures I have faced personally are:

1. My application for a student visa to study for my MS during my first attempt (1995) to follow my dream to the US, was rejected twice in 2 days. I could not apply for another two years as it was mandatory after 2 consecutive rejections. [I finally applied again in 1999 and made it]
   
2. My 3 years of being "vocationally challenged" during the downturn after the dot-com days. That enabled me to discover social networking online (starting with LinkedIn where I eventually went to work) since I was living it off-line. My LinkedIn profile only details those days since I value my achievements then as one of the best
   

Finally, as Henry Ford said: "Whether you think that you can or you can't, you're right."

Imagine: The Pursuit IS Happyness