If you have a few words to say… use Twitter.
If you have a few sentences to say… use the Facebook status message.
If you have a few paras to say… blog.
If you have much more to say than that… Shut up. Attention spans are very short in cyberspace…
© 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
I was looking forward to two book releases. I came to know of both through Facebook. (Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol and Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing…) The same networking site also (to me) broke the news of Michael Jackson’s death and Roger Federer’s last Wimbledon triumph. While all this is fine… I might have got these from the regular news sites had I been more regular … the worrying thing is that more and more “Personal Breaking News” is coming in this novel manner.
Take job changes for example. In the good ole days, you used to come to know through the person himself or atleast through the office grapevine. Now, on your Facebook Live Feed, you suddenly see a status message: Today is my last day in office! You wonder where that person is going. But for that, you’ll just have to wait for his LinkedIn update! These sites will also tell you in which city the person is, how he is feeling, what kind of a day he has had etc. Observe a person’s Wall and you’ll get a fair idea of what kind of person he or she is.
Now is this good or bad? I guess it’s a bit of both. Bad because the personal touch is going. People appear to be more comfortable in the virtual world as compared to the real one. That way, these are more of anti-social networking sites as they bring down one-on-one interactions. Good because it is necessary and we don’t have a choice. Life is becoming busier and busier and we are meeting and interacting with more and more people. If you are a gypsy like me, changing one’s city every few years, then you’ll have a huge network of friends and acquaintances. I guess this is the only way to stay in touch with everyone. It’s pretty effective.
Right now everything you do is more or less public. Maybe in the future we’ll have closed networks. Say ten different home pages on Facebook that cater to a particular group. Or specialized Twitter feeds that are tagged and non-searchable on the Net. I say that because the shift may be from the “Public” to “Private” virtual community talk. Maybe I’ll want to tell everyone in my life all of my news and feelings in a virtual and secure manner.
Wonder how things will be like when my son grows up. Out of all the futuristic predictions I have seen, two stick. One is a powerful microcomputer that can be embedded in the arm. The second is a projection screen. (Then there’s also the electricity generator via body motion.) So you could activate your computer and be in cyberspace 24/7 on any place on Earth.
Would we then all be lonely wanderers doing our work continuously and updating what’s on our mind all the time? (Or locked up in a hut like a hermit doing the same?).
How about an update straight from the mind? Imagine billions of people sending thousands of status messages each and every day in cyberspace. Wonder what an alien would make of that zettabytes (or yottabytes?) of random data.
© Sunil Rajguru