CONSTANT BETA

Ofcourse, I hit follow.

My friend apparently purchased me on Facebook today. So I ignored his request and took a screengrab of it before ignoring it.

And I created a glog of myself today on Glogster.

So yesterday I was doing some research on how women and men behave online and stumbled upon scribd.com
I’ve known of that website for a long time but I never really used it because the interface didn’t please me and there are too many ads cluttering the home page. But when I landed on scribd.com yesterday, I end up spending over 45 minutes hunting through its archives and database and downloading interesting reports. I also found pdfs of Haruki Murakami’s Norweigan Wood and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. What really amazed me was the amount of information people are making available for others online. Scribd and Slideshare.net are both fantastic examples of a milder version of an online university.

There are basically two types of information people are sharing online: 1) Organized 2) Chaotic. Here’s how I breakdown both: The kind of information offered on sites like scribd.com and slideshare.net represents an individual’s organized thinking: perhaps about an idea, or a topic of interest to them. Their thoughts are usually clear and they articulate it in the form of a presentation or a document. I classify this kind of free information share as organized information — in which, you may not learn a lot about people, but you learn a lot about what they know.

The other type of information share that is happening online is chaotic – this information share is anecdotal, visual, literal and often metaphorical. It may even border on offensive to unnecessary. This type of information can be found on free photo and video sharing websites, blogs, microblog platforms and other avenues like 43things.com, post-secret and ihate.com. This type of chaotic information share can and is usually done behind a mask of anonymity.

As a strategist, I’m most interested in understanding how this information share can be turned to our advantage and how we can actually make sense and benefit from this share. How can we analyze and derive  conclusive learnings from this information share? I hear that several agencies and companies are already employing and using spiders and other web programs to gather the free information floating out on the web ether – but I’m more interested in discovering patterns and processes that surround this scenario and figuring out, if there is one, a universal and singular method that can successfully make sense of this massive database of information.

This is my passion project and has been on my mind for the last couple of months. I have some ideas around how to realize this and I’m using the help of some smart, enlightened strategists to help me take this to the next level – but I’m asking you as well — can you help me?

My idea hasn’t matured to the next level and a lot of critical thinking that hasn’t happened yet needs to happen before any of this can make sense to you but I’m excited and I return home from work every night to work on this…

And to add one point of clarification – I’m not looking to develop a system that trolls blogs and other media sites and spews out a reports. There are plenty of those out there already. I know what I am proposing does not have a one-size-fit-all solution — I’m not looking to create another aggregator. What I’m looking to do is simply provide a better means to make sense of the free-floating chaotic information to people like me, who want to better understand people/ consumers.

This idea stemmed out of my very recent experience in the agency-life – any new project undergoes (and rightfully so) massive amounts of primary and secondary research. What I’m trying to prove is, because people are already sharing intimate details of their lives on the web, there has got to be a better way to include those insights in our work.

Anyways…

Spring in New York is beautiful – and it feels like it might have finally arrived. This morning when I was getting ready to leave for work, my area was shrouded in mist. I live by the river in Jersey City/ Exchange Place. It’s only 4 minutes from NYC in the PATH trains but it’s an island of it’s own. Very slow -almost fairy tale like with subdued yellow lights and light-rails right out of an Enid Blyton book making up for the city-scape. (Atleast until you reach the umpteen construction sites…) Anyways, it’s a beautiful day today and I wish more days like today

Happy, almost, summer.

I haven’t written here in so long and I think now, I am okay with that. I don’t feel the need to put my voice, thoughts and opinions out on the public forum so frequently anymore. I never was quite able to figure out how people maintained such active lives on twitter, blogs and numerous other smaller groups with a full-time job, family and life. Maybe I’m an introvert ? Or maybe the other’s don’t have a life apart from their online lives and jobs? I don’t mean to sound condescending – but I am truly was curious.

People’s nonsense (or their personal PR) on twitter just annoys me now. I’m also being a hypocrite on many levels because I go through phases of total immersion and then total isolation from twitter. But now that I’ve been hearing many top bloggers bullshit so much on twitter, I find myself boycotting their blogs and not being interested in their writings anymore.

The web has become a cacophony of voices – and I don’t want mine to be lost underneath them. I still want what I write to provide value and be meaningful. And my god – it feels so good to make that peace with myself!

Life in New York is fast. I’m working on some fun projects at work and some fun side-projects too. My parents are also visiting from India so the past month has been great. I’m always amazed at how much I learn at work from just observing how other people work and think. But I want to move it a step further now and take my thinking capabilities to the next level.

There’s an idea I’ve been toying around in my head…. but I have to formulate it and think through it. Stay tuned though – I will share soon!

Last weekend, I watched a new Bollywood movie based on the life of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. King Akbar  often dressed as a regular layman to see and his listen if his subjects were happy. He believed that he could only understand true sufferings of his subjects if he was amongst them and not isolated in his castle. Akbar would then return to court and act upon his observations to make his kingdom happy and satisfied.

I re-tell this story because it is a great metaphor for what brands should be doing right now. The Web has made connections and communications fluid, abundant and easy. So if you are a brand – chances are, your customers are talking about you online. And the only way you can keep them happy is if you are listening and more importantly acting upon what you listen.

Happy tuesday!

I’m a little stressed. I’m stressed about this responsibility that comes with being a blogger.
Being a blogger was hot once. Now, it is a chore. It started as something I did for myself and my friends, then it morphed into a more serious, professional persona and now everytime I log into type in here, I’m afraid it’s just another voice in the cacophony out there.

Bloggers I meet have ’strategies’ for their blogs, particular reasons why they start blogs and massive, drawn out plans for their blogs.
Clients I meet are wondering about these blogs – they want to wine and dine the bloggers and get them to create, “positive conversations” about blogs.
In another universe, one-time bloggers who are now quasi-famous, are taking potshots at each other, judging and criticizing the very outlets that supposedly started out ‘just out of interest,” and were meant to be subjective, not objective.
The web, the news, the conversations are rife with bitterness and a constantly shifting status-quo.

I come from the world of magazines – it was my first home and I get it. I understand the power of a voice, the power of influence. And I see it coming a full circle, when blogs aren’t just ‘blogs’ but blown-out, magazines that are edited and curated with a singular voice at the helm, becoming full-on media properties. They now have to have a facelift, better features, fancy photography and whatnot. Er, excuse me – are you still a blog? Oh wait a minute, you’ve even got contributing writers. Woah.

Excuse my rant, dear reader.
It’s just 1am on a Thursday morning and I’ve just realized that being a blogger holds no merit for me any longer. Yes, it got me my jobs but it’s not relevant to me in the context that it was before.

Returning back to the idea of privacy online, my friend Amit, has a very different point of view that I think is worth adding to this discourse. Our debate rose from teh idea of separating your worlds and contexts that you exist in. Here are his thoughts,

Ultimately, being completely open with all worlds, allowing them to mix, and letting your friends see you in your business contexts, and your boss see you in your personal life, is equivalent to putting faith in humanity and in yourself. It’s understanding that help and opportunity can come from anywhere at anytime, and there’s no way to predict it. And that people are at their deepest level good, that you are deserving of their attention, interesting enough, and worthy of their help, so letting them see more of you can only help you (and them) more than it hurts.

While I don’t agree with this, it is a very valid argument that deserves to be heard and discussed. I don’t agree with this thinking because to me each individual in my life exists in a different context. Your close friends cross over into different contexts of your life but for the rest, there should be no free pass. Friendships should be earned – and special benefits come with that, namely access to my full profile.

This does not mean every moment must be broadcast. There are exceptions to every rule, and times when discretion makes sense. You wouldn’t broadcast a job search while still employed, any more than I’d share minor squabbles with a significant other in a public forum.
But what a loss would it be if you didn’t share your victories and joys — the good times, if not the insignificant ones. It’s weird, this fifth relationship. There’s plenty of precedent to fall back on for relationships with your family, your friends, your coworkers, and your significant others, but most historically haven’t had to think much about their relationship with strangers. That was a problem left for celebrities. Until the Internet gave everyone a chance for microcelebrity.

I have been having this conversation in varying degrees and colors with other friends and each present a distinct, well-pontificated argument that I’d like to share with you. Every voice adds another layer to this debate and while there is no right answer, there is perhaps some weight in the idea that every individual has a social threshold (for strangers) they won’t cross. Whatever that threshold is for them – and it is different for everyone. You may be comfortable sharing your flickr gallery with everyone but not your age and your personal blog while I may be ok with having you observe me here in this space but perhaps not on facebook unless you are my friend. Does this make sense?

What’s your social threshold? What do you allow and not?

I have been visiting and re-visiting the issue of online identities for a while now. I want to de-construct my view and see if I could make a coherent argument for my position.
There has been a flurry of conversations and debates online on Design Observer and NYT about anonymity and pseudo-online personalities. I’m still exploring what it all means and trying to make some sense of it, but here’s where I stand for now.

Here’s what I reason
– People like me who
are so careful about their online identities are driven by fear.
Although I should point out that while fear maybe the underlying
factor, it is not fueled by the fear to ‘hide something," but instead
‘to protect."

I strongly believe that at the very core, our online behavior
mimicks our offline behavior (bar some of the advantages afforded on
the net, mainly – anonymity) So like we do in our offline lives, our
online lives exist in various contexts and circles. Professional,
Family, Friends, Other — sometimes those worlds overlap, sometimes
they do not. To cite from personal example, my boss at the bank added
me on facebook while I was in the midst of a job search. POKE found me
on facebook in response to a post I had on a facebook group which was
easily searchable if anyone were to follow my mini-feed or simply
browsing through the groups I am a member of. I was in a dilemma
because I very well couldn’t refuse my boss but how was I to accept his
request with my private moves out open in the public? My wall-posts
that referred to my move to NYC had to be deleted – I had to inform my
friends in the know to communicate using alternate means.

Another example – when facebook opened it’s doors to the
public, my cousins, family members and other folks from India surged on
facebook and eagerly added me as a friend. Now this was a real problem
- because contextually, my cultural upbringing questioned whether my
relatives and family members should be privy to conversations (on my
wall) between me and my friends. With my background, there was no way
these two worlds could co-exist mutually on a singular online platform.
Photos, relationship status-es, Wall posts, the innocent and honest
banter on the walls — everything would be subject to scrutiny. And
again, denying these members was out of question.

And lastly – when everyone started adding each other on
facebook, I was in a daze. The change was abrupt and fast. I could
remember thinking how two months back, facebook being about me and my close friends.
And now suddenly, I had lost the context for facebook and what it meant
for me.

*I think opinions of those who are relatively new to
facebook may differ here since their knowledge about facebook’s
environments is limited to the time they have been a member of the
network.

But people like me struggled – wondering if it was rude to deny
requests? who is a friend? what constitutes a friend? Also, in a
professional world, how do you strictly keep your relationships such
but still strong enough to allow them to grow? Again, in a field where
most jobs happen via networking, I was less inclined to deny those
connections.

The answer was plain and simple – private profiles for
‘friends." and the real profile for friends. Until I can trust the
‘friends,’ – there’s no reason why they should be privy to what my
friends deserve and get out of me. It is a pain to manage that yes -
but that is facebook’s fault, not mine. I am an ordinary individual and
I’m sure there are plenty of folks like me who feel this way. So
facebook should make it easier for people like us to use the facebook
platform and satisfy the various contexts we exist in. It’s really a
simple UI issue I think. And I can guarantee you, in the future
facebook will make this possible. It’s a fine balance.

Like I said, I don’t have answers but I think I know what
motivates the desire to maintain and actively manage your online
identity. It’s an oxymoron – because ofcourse, you want to be found
when someone googles you. And professionally for me, I should be found
on the various sites (twitter, iminlikewithyou, 43things, flickr,
orkut, friendster…..etc. etc) if someone searches for me there,
simply because how can I claim to understand social media without
deep-diving into it myself? So yes, I want to be found – but I want to
be careful about what’s found about me. Atleast to the level where it
can be controlled by me.

Facebook got rid of the "is" from their status update today, aligning itself to it’s audiences demands and conforming to be more twitter-like. The facbeook ’status’ messages today are abuzz with news about the disappearance of "is." 

This fascination with our own lives and the desire to share it with strangers amuses me sometimes. Everyday I am reminded of the ‘celebrity’ I could morph into if I wanted to.
These social tools have helped us manifest our illusory popularity within our niche groups, subjecting those in our circles to continuous broadcasts about the trite and sometimes, intimate details of our lives. We call it micro-blogging.

Wikipedia defines micro-blogging as,

"Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user."

It bothers me that we think of it as a revolution when it simply is just an innovation, an iteration at the most. Lets revisit the IRC chat days. ICQ identified users with a unique number and allowed them change their handle and keep the screename dynamic. In the first month alone when I started using ICQ (1998/ 99 was it?) my screen-name changed every few hours depending on my colorful teenage moods and emotional beat.

MSN  Messenger too, allowed for the same and in addition to giving users the flexibility to keep dynamic screen-names, it also allowed them to customize their status messages which in my case, (and those of my friends) varied from laments about life, homework & college to song lyrics and my whereabouts. But the information was being broadcast to 80 some friends with whom I shared real, tangible, offline relationships.

AIM messenger gave users a static user name with the ability to customize messages, updates and even icons- little widgets and tools that allowed users to express themselves and share bits and pieces of their lives.

Cellphone ringers in India allowed me to choose my current favorite songs so when my friends called me, instead of hearing the phone ring, they would hear the ’song of the moment’ which in most cases was a direct reflection of my life.

I outline these instances because in each and every one – users like me and you have with precision been broadcasting our lives to our friends. And we’ve probably been doing this before the term blog was coined.
These options have simply enabled the frequency with which we now share these details — evolving into a more robust, almost pollutant iteration of what we grew up with.

This evolution of micro blogging offers users the ability to become active participants instead of being passive observers. So now, we aren’t only sharing, but also conversing and commenting via micro-tools with an intensity that wasn’t as palpable in the earlier versions. Also and perhaps the most intriguing facet of our current version is our ability and our open-ness to broadcast our life events to an extended and expansive social circle.

My opinion on micro-blogging fluctuates – I know we are fascinated with ourselves but my life (and the other 98% of people’s lives) are barely interesting. They are simple, ordinary lives and I don’t know how if that begets incessant broadcasts. That’s just my two cents. (All the same, I have been guilty of doing the same)

It bothers me sometimes. I see a lot of micro-blogging happening on facebook that is merely by professionals who instead of using facebook as a social utility tool which is what it is meant to be, use it to toot their professional horns. To me, this dilutes the essence of facebook and I almost wish I could take my friends and shift elsewhere. But who would follow me?! And where would I do?

I suppose, the next evolution…..

My friend sent me an invitation to join Social Chat on facebook. Out of curiosity, I installed the application to check it out. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect but meeting strangers on facebook is not a functionality that fits within my framework of facebook.

I was confounded when a private message popped on my screen (deja vu –1998/1999–  rediff chat anyone? excite.com chat?! ) and asked,

A/S/L?

I haven’t heard that term in over 8 years. (For those not familiar with the term, A/S/L stands for Age/ Sex/ Location - a phrase that was used in the heyday of online chat when people were just discovering alternate ways to meet other people online)

But we are in 2007 now. There are social hierarchies in place. We have various identities online for specific reasons. An individual’s identity on J-Date is going to be different from their persona on linkedin or even facebook. My identities on certain networks are built to meet people (ning, linkedin, cyworld)  but on other networks, namely facebook, I want to connect with people I *already* know.
Applications like Social Chat dilute the meaning of facebook for me. Thankfully, it is only an application and I have opted out already. But this leads to an interesting question – should content, in this case, applications, be curated on facebook? Should there be an editorial team that decides what makes the cut and what doesn’t?

Or is it best left for the public to decide?