Digging, blogging, twitting, socializing–this is the buzz of the day! Are you on facebook? Orkut? MySpace? or the countless social web spaces that are mushrooming around you?
Who are you friends in each of these social sites? Are they the same? Are they a different? What do they feel? What do they think? What do they like? How often do you meet? ARE THEY REAL?
The truth is that the social media inhabitants are AVATARS of ourselves. The social media world is a chance to create the person we think we should be. (Not all of us may do that, but why not? It is harmless) We endow ourselves with a personality that is a figment of our dream about ourselves. Of course our friends avatars are the same, so I suppose it is as it should be. It is a social world where avatars interct with avatars using tools of interaction.
The reality is, we have began to rethink the human interactive experience. We are convinced that we are designing immersive, intelligent and communicative interfaces that can replace physical interaction in cyberspace. True, everybody gets to voice their opinion (no powerful voices cutting you out). True, everybody has the same tools to communicate and everybody can reply anywhere, anytime. It all seems very democratic and above board. Of course, this world is also not devoid of influencers or networkers.
Interestingly, a few of us may struggle to influence our groups or friends, by developing enough clout on the network. We may put in the necessary hard work to be the “bully” on the network or to prove that we know the “notables” and are in the inner circle of the rich and the famous!
Most of us would prefer to be networkers. As a networker, we can be a “creative”, if we contribute actively to the content on the network. We can be “immersed” if we are there for professional reasons. We can be “Observers” if we just browse and read and do not contribute. Finally we can be “inactives” if we just have social media memberships that we do not exploit.
Of course, categorization can vary based on perspective, but we will certainly must be fitted in a category by the Social Media world. After all, we are a name on the list and we perform operations on a site. Our activities are data and data has labels and trends.
So if you are on digg, twitter, facebook, orkut or linkedin or what not–Welcome to the world of Social Media. The game is getting serious.
