How many controversies nowadays start with:
In the beginning was the Tweet.
To put the old joke in reverse, who would have thought that with Twitter, you could have a constipation of words along with a diarrhoea of ideas.
I think the good ole Barney Song can be suitably modified to suit Facebook:
I Like you,
You Like me,
We’re all friends like friends should be,
With a great big Comment,
And a Poke from me to you,
Won’t you say you Like me too?
This Version By Sunil Rajguru
• Father: No news of him. He just fell off the Face of the Earth.
Son: No news of him. He just fell off Facebook.
• Today I’ve been feeling really lonely… like I’m the only person on Earth.
Maybe you should see a doctor.
Nah! I’ll be fine tomorrow. My Internet connection is down today.
• Dad…
…when we die, does our soul go to cyberspace?
…did people interact with each other before there were social networking sites?
…if they unleash a virus, then will there be a virtual famine in Farmville?
© Sunil Rajguru
Don’t know.
Can’t tell.
Don’t want to tell.
Do you want to know?
Does anyone really care?
Is there any point of what’s on my mind going out into cyberspace?
I don’t have a mind
I don’t mind!
Do you mind???!!!???
Do I even know my own mind?
Off Limits.
Private!
Keep Out!
Telling you hasn’t crossed my mind yet.
I would rather give you a piece of my mind.
Nice Bollywood song!
Yeah, you’d “Like” that wouldn’t you?
First you tell me, what’s on your mind?
I have half a mind to…
Never Mind!
Bottomline: We are all out of one’s minds to tell the whole world what’s on our mind!
© Sunil Rajguru
1. Facebook crosses 350 million.
That’s more accounts than email market leader Yahoo. If Facebook was a separate country, then we’d all live in virtual utopia full of lovey dovey friends and groups, no enemies, virtual gifts, quizzes that predict the future, virtual farms, water worlds, nice Tarot sessions and fortune cookies… And yeah, in numbers, that’s next only to the population of China and India.
2. US actor Ashton Kutcher gets 4 million “Followers” on Twitter.
How many did Jesus Christ have in his lifetime? What was the population of the kingdom at that time anyway? Will Kutcher state in a Lennonisque fashion: “I am more popular than…”?
3. The Most Powerful Man in the World is on LinkedIn.
And Twitter (Trailing Kutcher with close to 3 million Followers). And Facebook. (A cool 7 million supporters).
Is that why he beat Senator McCain? Great power in the online world as a launching pad? (Even if Obama doesn’t actually post the updates himself, it’s still a Huge Leap Forward for Cybermankind)
4. The high and mighty are all getting Socially Networked.
Raymond T. Odierno, the Commanding General, Multi-National Force—Iraq is on Facebook! And he’s joined by Pakistan’s former General Pervez Musharraf! Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is on Twitter? Need I say more? I could go on and on… but you get the general picture!
5. Controversies! Controversies! Controversies!
When anything enters into multiple controversies, then you know it’s time has come.
Republican Joe Wilson raised his finger to Obama and said, “You lie!” and before he knew it, a storm was unleashed on Twitter. The Internet assures an immediate and widespread backlash nowadays. (Incidentally, Wilson is also on Twitter!)
Religious leaders slammed Facebook and there was a surfeit of crimes related to these networking sites
In humble India too, where the Internet penetration is so low, there was the Shashi Tharoor Twittergate controversy, where the minister almost lost his job and the hilarious trending topic #chetanblocks related to writer Chetan Bhagat blocking a Follower.
6. Reel life and fiction.
A Twitter mention in the climax of the latest Robert Langdon adventure? Facebook in a Bollywood movie? Social Networking gained a lot of traction in 2009 and it is inspiring a lot of fiction for 2010 and beyond. Look out for Kevin Spacey produced The Social Network about the founding of Facebook. (Directed by none other than David Fincher)
7. The Uber Cyber Ego.
The new age Ego Search was the Google Search. But now here’s something even better…
How are you feeling? What are you eating? Do you have a headache? Are you stuck in a traffic jam?
Is anyone interested? Well even if they are not, then you can make sure a few thousand people at least know about it. If you’re a celebrity, make that millions—all without a newspaper, TV channel or a personal website. A handful of social networking accounts will do the trick.
© Sunil Rajguru
Hurrah! Facebook has changed its Privacy settings! But what is all the fuss about? And should you actually bother? The good part is that it takes just one sitting to optimize and get the most out of the New Facebook. In the old settings, you just had choices of showing content to Friends, Friends of Friends, Networks and Everyone. The Network concept was downright silly. For example, if you are in the India network, there may be millions of people in the network. So much for privacy!
Now you can choose who sees which piece of content. Here’s how:
1. Lists: The most important thing you got to do is to make lists. For example, you could make the following lists: Family, Work, Friends, Schoolmates… This is a one-time job. Now a different and specific group of friends or list(s) can view every piece of content you post. When you add a new Friend, you can automatically add him or her to the relevant list.
2. Default Settings: Go to Privacy Settings–>Profile Information
Choose who gets to see what. To use the specific Lists you have created above, click “Customize” and choose from there. You can also choose a group of friends not mentioned in the Lists.
For example, the settings could be:
About me–>Everyone
Personal Info–>Friends of Friends
Family and Relationship–>Friends
Photos and Videos of Me–>Family
Posts by Me–>Everyone
Etc.
Remember: If you choose “Everyone”, that means it will eventually come on search engines.
3. While posting…: If you simply post a status message, then it will automatically choose the default settings. Otherwise, before posting, click the arrowhead next to the lock and choose your privacy settings for that particular status message!
4. Groups: Imagine you are having a controversial discussion in a group. Later when you use similar keywords, you’ll find it appearing on Google Search. What happened? Simple. The owner of the group would have set the settings as Content Open to Public. In such groups, whatever you write will become public. Check for that before posting liberally in any group.
5. Twitter type following: Now when you send a Friend request, all the person’s public content will start coming in your live feed. So you can follow that person like Twitter. But if you have a dozen friend requests from downright strangers and don’t “Ignore” them, then you have already started coming in their feed!
6. Photos: It’s better to use Only Friends for personal and private photos. The reason being Friends of Friends also runs into thousands of Facebookers, which is virtually public.
7. Links/Notes: You may want these to be public and show up in searches and hence click “Everyone”.
Final Tip: The moment you click on “Everyone” for anything, it is bound to land up on Google Search. If you want it, that’s fine. Otherwise, avoid it altogether.
Most people will find all this quite complicated and tedious. But if you implement it, it actually works!
© Sunil Rajguru
Facebook now has 350 million users. The milestones keep coming and coming. What next?
2010: Facebook crosses 500 million users.
2011: Facebook crosses 1 billion users.
2012: Facebook launches the Second computer and Internet Revolution. Since everyone wants to be on Facebook, everyone wants a desktop/laptop and broadband connection.
2013: The world, which was ready to get into another round of Recession, doesn’t do so thanks to the new IT and Telecom revolution.
2014: Global literacy rates go up as everyone wants to read people’s profiles on Facebook. The phenomenon of stalking vanishes as all the weirdoes start following Facebook accounts.
2015: America issues the Facebook Identity Card, which replaces all other forms of identification.
2016: India undergoes Transformation and as all the Indian politicians jump on to the Facebook bandwagon and try to get as many Friends and Fans as possible. A competition starts to get the maximum number of “Likes” after posting things like: Just laid 20 roads. Just completed the Metro Project. Just electrified 100 villages, etc.
2017: 90% of the world is now on Facebook. The remaining 10% are declared as “Dangerous to Civilization as We Know It” and are hunted down.
2018: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gets the Nobel Prize for Peace amidst the Facebook Witch Hunt Controversy. Facebook gets the Nobel Prize for Literature.
2019: SETI receives $100 billion funding. Humans are tiring of each other and are desperate to have aliens join Facebook.
2020: The US Presidential Elections is fought solely on Facebook. As expected, Mark Zuckerberg emerges victorious.
2021: Bharat Ratna Shashi Tharoor, the pioneer of political social networking in India, sworn in as Prime Minister.
2022: The Last Wave of Facebook Resistance is crushed. Now the whole world is Facebooked.
2023: Governments and constitutions collapse as local leaders rely solely on Facebook to make their decisions.
2024: The Facebooker Prize displaces the Nobel Prize as the most important global award.
2024: The Facebook Zeitgeist is formed. All one does is feed in one’s preferences, likes, dislikes and ideas for the world, country and city. The Zeitgeist automatically computes and calculates what the world and everyone has to do. No need for committees and bodies of any kind.
2025: Facebook Zeitgeist attains Godlike status.
2026: The Dislike button is finally introduced after years of campaigning and leads to an all-out war on Facebook.
2027: The last remaining survivors of the Facebook Resistance unleash the deadly Facebook Doomsday virus.
2028: While the Doomsday Virus initially gets 10 billion Dislikes on Facebook, nobody is able to do anything about it and eventually the whole Facebook System shuts down.
2029: With the end of Facebook, mankind is left clueless. The subsequent anarchy leads to the end the existing civilization.
3013: An archaeological find unveils lost data disks pertaining to Facebook. Experts conclude that Facebook was once a planet that existed between Mars and Jupiter and got destroyed due to some mysterious reason.
4014: Thanks to SETI’s success at transmitting the Facebook code throughout the universe, many intelligent worlds are now on to Facebook. The Facebook saga keeps rolling on, as the Grand Purpose of Facebook was not to destroy civilization on Earth, but the universe itself…
© Sunil Rajguru