I Invented Post-It's and because of Facebook, everyone knows it!

You walk into the room, 10 kilos lighter than the last time you had seen all these people. Your hair doesn't do that woo hoo thing at the front and you have finally grown into your body and passed that stage where your legs were too long for your torso. Your candy on your arm is looking particularly stunning tonight and your wallet is stocked with photos of your new baby and amazing holiday trips! Your fascinating life is awaiting a glorious show and tell extravaganza!


Hold your breath...step in and ....no one bats an eyelid! WHY?????

Because they already know all about your life, they have seen the photos, heard the news, seen the scandals and watched the weight etch itself off bit by bit...

BUT HOW???

Thanks to our little social media tool Facebook, we all know about each others lives instantaneously. We are no longer separated by the shields we used to put up because we are sharing so much of our lives on the Internet. The access to another persons life has never been so apparent.

High school reunions. We watched Romy and Michelle shock their whole graduating class in their hot new body's, fab new outfits and the attitude that finally saw them as real people and not boxed in D grade members of the school hierarchy. When you leave school, every person has this moment where they envision their life, their career and the trail of success that follows. The whole point of going back to school, to reunite with the people you haven't seen is to brag about your life. Now people will tell you- hey that shows a superficial attitude and twisted logic. I am here to tell you, if you were going back to see your 100 close friends, then you are mistaken. The people you really care about and that you want to see, are the people you are already seeing. You meet up with these people now and then, do the quick catch up and let them into your life, successes and failures. Which leaves the rest of the 100...as the people you do not really care about to be perfectly honest, just the people that you want to show yourself off too. Oh and lets not forget, to snoop on!

What has happened with the shift in social media, the tools such as flick'r, facebook, myspace, youtube, and the beloved RSVP...is that we are engaging our lives so deeply that hardly anything is left to surprise. We are not only connected with our best friends but also with our closest 600 friends if you get my drift. You can explore their holiday photos, see their children being born, see them graduate and hear about their scandalous nights all from your home. And now thanks to Foursquare, you not only know what they are doing but where they are doing it! So when it comes to that great reveal at the high school reunion...the sizzle is lost.

Social media on the one hand keeps us well connected, but is it keeping us too connected? Are we losing that aspect of privacy that keeps our lives interesting, our real life conversations intriguing and our successes celebrated?

I am glad to have these social media tools, because it among other things, fills in the time and keeps me connected. But i am slightly saddened at the fact i will lose out on a huge part of growing up to its fullest degree...The High School Reunion.


Well, I'm off to invent post-it-notes!

PS. "I hope your babies look like monkeys"

Re-Start! Re-Wind! Re-Visit!

March 28th 2010 11:38

And here we go again....




Lets start this back at the beginning- "a very good place to start" as the Sound of Music line goes.

Basically, don't we all have to do that at some point. Whether it be recollect our thoughts, revisit our decisions or just plain old start your blog up again with a new found determination like that diet you promised yourself you would start up again every Sunday night for the fresh week.

It has come to my attention over the past year that blogs are more than just a way to express your innermost uninteresting yet interesting desires to a webberverse of listeners and other amateur writers. It is also a way to analyse social media through the eyes of the user.

The user plays a key role in the transition from broadcast media to interactive media. What is interactive media? It is all that jazz that your specialist friends have been harping on about when they use such jargon as Web 2.0 (or for those of you who are more attuned to the food world...isnack 2.0). This interactive field allows an otherwise untrained audience to become masters of their landscapes- writing, teaching and conveying their own knowledge and experiences to others who are looking for otherwise generic answers. The user is involved and engaged rather than just an audience to what is dribbled out at them by governing forces. By using cleverly designed social media reading tools such as the amazing Radian 6, alexa, compete, and hundreds of others- you gain the key to a world of knowledge, analysis and basically understanding how to tap into an audience so that you can adopt an element of social media to your pursuit...PR, Advertising, Marketing or otherwise.

So all in all, after learning about the beauty and importance of these tools which rely on constantly updated and up-kept blogs, twitter accounts, facebook groups and so forth....i felt the need to get back on the blogging scene.

I cant promise that all my blogs will be so socially engaged or even knowledgeable as my best work is usually describing the random events of my day or a whimsical thought that starts me on a tangent...

next post...Why I-snack failed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This one has been bugging me!

Cheers Big Ears!