Tag: Social Networking

Perceived message

Message received often times is different from message intended.

Wrong timing. Different context and stress level. Words that inadvertently trigger negative emotions.

We live and learn.

It’s not easy to get across, at both cognitive and emotive levels.

Male are known for missing emotional signals more often than female.

That’s why long distance relationships are hard. We can’t rely on non-verbal cues.

Perfect communication doesn’t exist.

Only when two frames of reference converge in a perfect eclipse.

It’s as rare as the Moon and the Sun passing.

Yet we try. We rely on objects to speak for us, on gifts and on symbolism.

These days, people use chat, text and video calls. Yet Hallmarks cards are still thriving.

Twitter is for bursting self-promotion.

Facebook for social, more than two.

LinkedIn for professional networking.

That leaves the ubiquitous SMS and chat (which requires simultaneous typing).

I know that fax and voice mail are on the way out.

Just like pagers and answering machines.

We move on. We change the way we communicate. With emoticons and acronyms..

Languages that once belonged in OPs domain now drifted into our daily conversation.

Machine-like language for a dehumanized world.

Please get to the point ASAP.

OK. I promise to get it done by COB.

Can you hear me saying? All I intend to say is ….

Please don’t get it all wrong. I meant well. Oh, that’s not enough?

Sorry, I completely disregard your circumstances. Are your under stress? I see.

Let me start over again. Since you are this and that….. I just want to say this ….and that. Now we acknowledge the other ‘s level of communication, we begin to factor in empathy. I often feel the same way. People read me wrong most of the time etc…But I found that ….

One of the best conversation on race took place in a(imaginary) trench, between a Princeton Lieutenant (white) and a career sergeant (black) in Matterhorn. Since they both were going to die, the Lieutenant asks the Sergeant to teach him the “hand dance”. After a few times, he still did not feel right. The retort ” that is because you are not Black”.

Even when you meant well, still it’s not enough. Perceived message.

Neon God

” People bowed and prayed, to the neon god they made” (Sound of Silence now inducted to

the American Museum as Classic American Sound to be preserved).

Meanwhile, we spend an average 8 hours per month on Facebook, “the cathedral they made” (same amount of time people attend church services).

Twitter is not addictive. Facebook is.

Via the latter, we learn about people and companies, and the company they keep.

Those “likes” and snippets keep trickling in, like rain drops that Pavlovian-condition us to salivate.

Facebook works well with Youtube. One-two punch.

The video link is right there, ready to be viewed.

While Twitter is like a news feed, Facebook has become our trusted source of recommended entertainment and enlightenment.

Family photos and commercial photos both pop up indiscriminately.

It’s all in the pipe, and we open the floodgate, willingly without reservation (after all, we “friended” them in the first place).

What in the beginning resembled child’s play now commends global attention and respect (our next Steve Jobs).

It’s like a Casino, Cathedral and Community theater all in one.

While Ebay might be the largest bazaar, Facebook has become the Neon God (the Bubble of our own making) to which people bow and pray.

The platform has become the prophet.

The medium, the message.

8 hours a month, forever and ever, world without end.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2095516,00.html

In restless dreams I walk alone…. and the voices of the prophets are written on subway walls, Facebook walls, and whisper’d in the Sound of Silence.

Reality cross-over

In a  God-Father scene, the execution order was carried out as cut-away from the black-tie wedding scene.

Lately, President Obama in Brazil attending state dinner (while France-led air strike was carried out over Libya no-fly zone ), and two nights ago at the White House Correspondents’ dinner (while the takedown was carried out in Pakistan). Hollywood materials. (at this edit, Hurt Locker’s Oscar-winning director was slated to direct “killing BL”).

Then there was Tom Clancy‘s Dead or Alive just out late last year.

People are confused and intrigued more with reality than fiction. China news agency published a different version, and I am sure, in the dark corner of Islamic extremism, we will find a Moon-Landing type of  conspiracy to vent their anger.

Meanwhile, our Reality-Show star (as of this edit, he withdrew after the birth certificate debacle) wanted to run for President.

And our current one could be cut out of Hollywood billboard (with the God Father’s sound track, of course).

One reality that should overshadow everything else: Twitter rules the day, as far as  scooping.

140 characters is hard to beat.

Until some young guys in a garage  come up with another disruptive technology, Twitter is King of the Hills.

It jolts you out of your seat. Sparks a conversation. Triggers further inquiries into said topic.

To Tweet is now our 21st-century verb, as common as Xerox and Google (whose re-org charted a new course, that of “knowledge creation” as oppose to just Search, or document handling as Xerox).

Our attention span can always handle one more tweet. And one more.

Same 24 hours a day. Same sleeping pattern and daily habits. But a tweet can always enter and intrude our lives.

Until we can no longer do without it.

There are lots of  lessons in short-burst communication. Use imagery that strikes the chord, like :

“I will be back!” (in this case, the same actor, making a real Hollywood comeback after trying his hand at governing).

Reality finally has another way to creep into our lives, in new format.

No more newspaper on the train. Just me, and my tweets, 140 characters at a time. Until eternity.

No one wants to be left out of the loop.

Now, the meaning of “up to speed” just gets more refined, or should I say, re-calibrated. Up to the second.

We will sort it all out later. Is he dead or alive? The guy who broke the story had to tweet good-night “I did not kill him, now can I catch some sleep”.  Twitter is our 21st-century communication conveyor belt, and excellent source of materials for Chaplinesque school of comedy. Communication in short bursts. Think in chunks of 140 characters. I was told there was a margin of allowance, but the limits were set for optimal transmission and reception.

For sound bites such as “I’ll be back” or “Dead or Alive”, we don’t even use up all the Twitter’s allowance.

Last Sunday night, a short burst of tweets i.e. we’ve got him,  was enough to turn college students into monkeys. Catharsis it was.

Filter builder

Building up our filtering capacity does not mean firming up our prejudice. But no matter what we do, we can only watch an average of 4 hours of TV and a few hours on the Web, mobile or stationary.

So we rely on thought leaders. Two-step information flow. Except this time, information flow through a social network i.e. multiple gate-keepers. We essentially recreate what early radio stations did when they strung together broadcast relay stations (to deliver a larger audience to advertisers) with their affiliates.

To be prejudice-free (reaching out only to friends and reading only their posts), I try to connect with a diverse pool, from left, center to right, black white and yellow, male female and gay and straight.

While we die alone, we don’t have to be isolated in our thought life.

In fact, we should recalibrate our filter, to let in more

data of different shapes and sizes. Ours is a post-Columbus Google era and each of us, our own press agent. Some even venture to suggest Social Media profile to replace credit history.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/26/why-your-social-media-profile-might-be-your-next-credit-score/

In 2010 the year in review, they posted a picture showing a naked Haitian woman who contracted cholera, lying and dying on the streets. No one stopped to cover her up (I hope the photographer would, after taking that picture that stirred our conscience).

And remember Nida, dying in front of our Twitter eyes during post Iranian election?

When I was in International Journalism class, we touched briefly on information flow, and how it had always been from North to South, from information-rich countries to information poor ones. Well, that was before YouTube and Twitter.

Now, anyone with a clip or tweet can share. New Dean of Columbia Journalism school, Steve Coll, will have to start a Twitter account to  stay relevant.

I have yet learned how to build a twitter filter. So what harm can it do me, reading unsolicit 140 characters. It would be an equivalence of hearing an elevator pitch from an aggressive salesman, whose odd of success is quite small (because he skips over the discovery phase). But some tweets stick and I learn something new every day. Technology is just a tool to deliver content.  Just don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Do you hear what I hear.

Here’s my card

You have heard that line in movies, at the bar, or convention hall.

The Post had an article about the survival of the card in our digital age.

Maybe because it’s so small, so humble, and so obvious.

Google was thinking big i.e. “organize the world’s information”, thus, overlooked the tiny card in our wallet.

I received a business card which says “name, looking for employment in such and such field”.

I thought that was quite a sign of our time.

I got tired of printing my position (will work for food). So I printed my social network URL instead.

Our identity has slowly evolved, from off-line to online,  national passport to digital passport.

Virtual identity. We update photos and other data on our social graph.

We used to have coaches in sports, music, career. And now, there are  new breed of  online business coach.

Larger play place. More global. Higher benchmark.

It used to be “on the web, nobody knows you are a dog”.

Now, you need to approach multiple platforms from Twitter to YouTube, from Facebook to LinkedIn.

New rules of engagement.

New rules of PR.

Yet the business card stays the same.

Hi touch, low tech.

Easily exchanged at mixer.

Strong hand grip. Name tag on your right chest. Card on your left hand.

Impressive impression.

Twitter speech replaces elevator speech.

Let’s go.

Your name? Mine is .

Here’s my card.

 

Unsung heroes

I channel surfed last night. C-SPAN 3 covered the Memorial in PA for flight 93, those unsung heroes who diverted terrorist plot 9 years ago.

The uncut shot kept panning the vast expanse of Pennsylvanian field, future home of Flight 93 Memorial.

Graphically speaking, it was boring. MOS (mid out sound) since the mike did not reach far enough to hear the VIP conversation (First Lady and former FL were among them).

In contrast, we could see and hear Terry Jones, instant celebrity for his threat and now recanted threat, just fine.

His Campbell-soup-like-15 minutes of fame.

An article in the Washington Post says it all “tyranny of the moment”.

The Web democratizes so much that the Gainesville pastor gains a PR upper hand (which makes Kansas pastor who has protested at military funerals envy).

He even grew his signature mustache to come across as credible (it’s a step up from preaching just to his extended families).

I am sure he will have fans and followers if opened a facebook page.

Meanwhile, real heroes who took action and paid the price with their lives barely got their names on the marble.

Such is the state of the world as we are living it.

Imagine flight 93 heroes debating the consequences of their action. No, there weren’t any time. They just went ahead and did the right thing.

Brought to mind my favorite quote: “he is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep, to gain that which he cannot lose”.  American martyrs don’t get noticed,

since it’s not in the US culture to condone and celebrate such an act. But it did happen, on that fateful day, which we often forget due to tyranny of the moment.

 

A billion bucks!

Twittering to the tune of a billion bucks?

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2009/tc20090924_956402.htm?campaign_id=related_AK

And the deficit changed slightly to the tune of 1.29 trillion bucks.

Since when we are anesthetized to these huge dollar figures?

But I must give it to the Lab geeks who came up with new inventions: copying over the distance (fax), texting over the phone (SMS), Voice over IP (Skype) and Facebook/Twitter (user-generated content).

During the Tiananmen Square incident, protesters tried to send and receive fax documents.

And last summer, in Iran, people twittered. Signs of the time.

Tech and social change.

And the Beatles albums got remastered.

“All we are saying, is ‘give Peace a chance'” (Lennon Legend).

It’s not that we are lacking the means for social discourse but we certainly lack the will.

Tribal societies just hunt for enough food (no Frigidaire) and the rest of the night, gather around

the fire, to hear the Chief telling his folklores.

Definitely those fairy tales lasted longer than 140 characters. And I bet you any of the people in that community could recite those tales from memory, their version of soundbites . But they wanted to hear it again and again from the Chief. It’s assuring, like a child who needs to be tugged in . Somehow, in the darkness of night, they believe tomorrow will be the same, safe and secure.

Well, today, you can’t even walk out of a check out line without double-checking your receipts (because the line items

might have been charged with the older and higher prices by the computer, while the sign advertised a lower amount).

Supply chain, bar code, algorithm fluctuation (just like airline price change).

We have mutated way past the smokestack era. And it depends on what your view of the future is,

a Billion bucks for Twitter might be too low an evaluation. You see, it’s the Southwest Airlines model for Narrow-Casting. Citizen news, where it happens, while it is happening. No microwave (truck) nor microphone to make news.

Just twitter. I am sure YouTube will soon limit their video length to accommodate the Network effect (more video, the higher value of the network).

We, worker bees, buzzing and pollinating  user-generated content, 140 characters at a time, to a tune of a Billion bucks. By the time the bottom billion joined in, a billion bucks will have been too low an evaluation.

Whoops! I have just passed 400 words. Old school! Forgive me. My first tech sales was a fax machine, then “brick” phones with separate batteries. And way back then, the Chief used to ramble on way past bed-time. What’s the hurry? Isn’t information (hence knowledge) supposed to be infinite. I got it. We are still operating on old assumptions of network and spectrum scarcity. A agricultural-based Malthusian view  as applied to the information age.  When Twitter gets properly IPO’ed, it might have enough cash in their war-chest to increase data rate to 150 characters. I will then be much happier.

 

facebook lite

On Facebook Lite, people with mobile devices can just send a quick comment and get on with hearing the President Speech.

http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/09/11/with-facebook-lite-a-step-deeper-into-twitter-terrain/

Social networking not “for here” but “to go”.

It’s the equivalent of talking to friends while on a moving train or automobile, or  while paying at the cash register.

We are a society in a hurry. Real hurry!

And I must admit, Twitter did give Facebook a run for the money.

Snappy attention. Shorter bursts of data stream. Get to the point and in your face.

“You lie”.

It’s common for us to go about all our lives, doing a million things, good , bad and ugly, only to be remembered by one short burst or comment.

The President warned Wakefield High School Students to be careful of what they post on Facebook.

I might add, especially be mindful when commenting on Facebook Lite. The nature of mobile device might fool one into thinking that it’s just a short text message. No it’s not. It’s micro-blogging. And it meant to post, not sent and be received by an intended audience of one.

Back to consumer sentiment.

According to the latest poll, people (80%) are still bewildered, the state of a deer caught by an incoming head light.

Despite Bernanke being a student of the late Great Depression, he couldn’t make the problems go away.

We need to send someone to jail. We did. We need to get people  a new set of wheels. We did.

We need small wins, consistently. Well, we haven’t. Cash for (rusty) appliances? Cash for bulbs? Cash for clunkers?

I propose Cash for old phones. That way, we are stimulated to move on to Smart phones wired with Facebook Lite.

Nurse a Miller Lite while at it. Friday afternoon, on White House or any house lawn, thumbing your key pad . Can we all get along? But I still am careful about what I post. We got enough to deal with these days, from ID theft to IOU. Who need unwarranted short bursts that will come back and haunt us digitally, and eternally.

You see, bad comments are now so democratized that they don’t belong in the purview of public figures, just like

blogging wouldn’t be just for Martha Stewart or Huffington. Just being at Wakefield High will do. And it’s not the word count that counts. Short bursts, like “you lie”, will do. My short comment is “you win, I win, win-win”.