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How to break up online: a practical guide for modern lovers

5 Apr

On the internet, everyone is a child, as both Stephen Fry and I have observed (though with differing levels of wit and brio).  Tiring of witnessing Facebook fuck-ups and Twitter twattery, I thought I’d share some wisdom collected and collated from painstaking (and at times painful) observation of online behaviour.  Love and its loss can be hell, but leaving a tear-sodden digital memento only serves to prolong the agony. 
Here are seven steps to clambering back to – if not heaven – certainly Planet Sanity.

If you need a quick visual allegory on the wisdom of separating public from private, click here.

One: slice like a ninja                                                                                 

So you’re regretting that giddy moment when you plighted your troth on Facebook. The public reconfiguration is too painful to be borne.
The good news is it doesn’t need to be. Figure out what time most of your network will be asleep. Set your alarm. Log onto Facebook. Go to ‘edit my profile,’ change your relationship status, then immmediately remove the update from your wall.
Three clicks, three seconds.
Stealth and speed is key. You need to act fast to reduce the likelihood of your friends commenting on it. If you’re friends with nerds, you may have a problem; nerds never sleep.  However, if you’re friends with nerds, this entire dilemma may feel somewhat unfamiliar to you.

Two: throw a block party

Starve your inner masochist of the oxygen of constant peeks into your ex’s life.  It’s a masochist; it craves punishment.  You, on the other hand are a healthy, well-adjusted individual who is moving on with your life without continually reopening the wound to season it with salt.  Use a service like Knowem or Username Check to ensure you’ve blocked them in every single possible location, on the offchance you start using the service again. Even Plurk. Much like love, social network usage can be unpredictable. You thought you’d be with your love forever – and that’s how you used to feel about Friendster, too.

Three: PDAs are DOA.

Public Displays of Angst will do you no good at all. Whether the split was acrimonious or amicable;  whether your relationship spanned five decades or five minutes, nothing worth saying about the private affairs of human beings can be adequately expressed in a status update.  By giving in to the temptation, essentially, you’ve let your ex down, you’ve let humanity down, but most of all, you’ve let yourself down. Isn’t that right, Mrs Harbord?  If you must rant and rave, keep it old school: write it in a letter – make it as long and vitriolic as you like – then tear it up.
Eat the pieces, if you like. Feel better?

Four: where is my mind?

Because you clearly weren’t paying attention during point three, and because you think you might feel better if you express your pain to the world, drop by drop, here’s a pro-tip: create a new twitter account. Lock it. Invite close friends or distant ones to view it; just don’t invite your boss or anyone you may wish to deal with on a professional footing at any point in the future, ever. Call it something suitably bonkers to remind your friends not to share your crazed rantings outside your locked network.
Then you can choke up lumps of anguish 140 characters at a time until the heartache goes away or you become revulsed by your own self-indulgence, whichever happens first.

Five: every breath you take

Much like the adage that eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves, cyber-stalking will bring little joy to the stalker. Even after you’ve blocked your ex, it doesn’t take much Google-fu to bring a flood of information about their activities into your sad little world. But like smoking and many other addictive behaviours, it’s a sin of commission, not omission.  It’s genuinely easier not to do something than it is to do it.  Yes, there are photos of him surrounded by a bevy of beauties. Yes, she does seem to be using an awful lot of flirty emoticons when she talks to @thatdouche on Twitter.  So what?  Either they have sufficient self-regard that they’re simply choosing not to post photographs of themselves crying into the gin online, or they’ve moved on. Isn’t it time you did?

(And delete the Google Alerts for their name immediately. That’s just creepy.)

Six: fake it til you make it… (…to the bedlam)

This isn’t really something that should ever need to be expressed, but in this topsy-turvy world, apparently sense is becoming uncommon, so here goes: do not, under any circumstances, create a honey-trap fake profile on Facebook, RSVP or even Second Life in which you create the profile of your ex’s dream lover in order to cyber-seduce them.
It proves nothing.
If the person of your dreams expressed an interest in you, you’d probably take the bait too, and more importantly, your fraudulent succubus / incubus won’t bring your lover back, because it’s not real, remember? If a shared love of pina coladas didn’t keep you together, it certainly won’t reunite you now, unless your ex actually left you because you weren’t crazy or deceptive enough.  In which case, go nuts. Literally.

Seven: don’t blog about it. Oh, wait….

<caveat>You’re so vain, you probably think this blog post is about you…and it probably is, but I mean it with love and respect.
In love, as online, nothing ventured, nothing gained. We’re forging through uncharted waters, and there are bound to be casualties. (I count myself amongst their number).

Still making mistakes, but never the same ones twice.</caveat>

A Room of One’s Own: do women need separate spaces to flourish?

15 Mar

Sometimes it’s tough to be both a professional and a person.

Virginia Woolf suggested every woman needed a room of her own to write. To do our best work, perhaps we need our own space.  Yeats said it was a choice between

…perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark

Last week was an interesting one in terms of the resurgence of feminist debate.  March 8th was International Women’s Day, a day of celebration for women’s achievements, yet containing the implicit assertion that the remaining 364 days belong to men.

I support the celebration of great achievements regardless of gender, and can’t help but feel that by setting separate awards, days and so on, we perpetuate the notion that women’s accomplishments can’t be ranked alongside those of their male counterparts.  How constructive is it to maintain the sense of women needing special or at least different treatment?

I have no argument with, for example, women and men entering separate sporting events; it’s obvious our physical capabilities are different (last I heard, there were no male entrants in the ‘giving birth’ sweepstakes).  But when it comes to the cerebral, I fail to see why women are obliged to compete in the intellectual equivalent of the Paralympics.

Unlike many of my peers, I’ve been proud to call myself the apparently now dirty word ‘feminist’ for as long as I’ve been aware of the concept.  I believe absolutely in feminism, as defined by the purity and clarity of thought of early feminists like Wollstonecraft, and uncluttered by the political infighting and schisms of later wave feminism. The most workable definition I can provide is:

the recognition that men and women do not receive fair or equal treatment as a result of their gender, and the desire to change that situation

Anyone wishing to quibble with the first clause need only refer to recent figures proving that salaries still differ hugely between women and their male counterparts.  Anyone wishing to quibble with the second is probably not someone I’m going to waste my time engaging with or trying to convert.

I’m a passionate supporter and member of Girl Geeks for the simple reason that women involved with technology are still in the minority. Anecdotally and from personal experience I know it can be tough to flourish and be recognised in an environment where you’re the odd (wo)man out.  But what’s really important to me is that both women and men are welcome at GGD functions and invited to contribute regardless of gender.

There’s something really wonderful about being in a group of like-minded women, and I’ve certainly found that such an environment can be more supportive than a mixed gender equivalent.  But that’s all the more reason not to cloister ourselves away, but to bring these ostensibly ‘female’ skills to bear on every environment, every interaction, to the point that sharing, listening respectfully and encouraging the more inhibited to contribute will simply be a part of everyone’s “how to be human” toolkit.

That’s why I can’t be fully supportive of Social Media Women, although I remain a huge fan of its creators, fabulous women all.  Hang out and talk shop with whomsoever you please, but I baulk at the association, through both my gender and profession, with an formalised organisation that actively discriminates, positively or not.

Digital Citizens (which I help to organise) held its first event last week - I’m obviously biased, but I think it went pretty well (and we scored a FourSquare Swarm badge – quite the high point for me..)

I wasn’t keeping score, but I think the number of participants and contributors was roughly equal in gender terms, and I certainly felt I could express my point of view and be heard doing so.

Rebekah Horne of MySpace said recently that

for women to succeed in this industry, they need to work fifteen times harder than their male counterparts.

If we want this situation to end within our lifetimes, the answer is to cease to recognise gender as a factor in our work and social lives.

Leave it at home; in your bedroom, your shower, your dungeon or wherever you like, but it doesn’t belong here.

Thar be freaks: this week’s top searches

24 Feb

Inspired by the lovely Annik, I thought I’d share with you the kind of things people type into their preferred search engine and must be very disappointed to find my blog in response to.

This week’s top searches:

the wife of bath, year of the cat attributes, “cat in a tree” icon, what does it say if your boss wants you to pick him up from the airport, what does it say if your boss wants you, cat iconography.

The internet: giving freaks and weirdos reassurance and a sense of community since 1991.

*shakes head*

Maybe i need some SEO juju…..

Owing your soul to the company store: does your employer own your Twitter account?

29 Jan

As I’ve discussed in the past, new social spaces and interactions are changing so fast that they force us to adapt and develop new protocols on the fly. One issue that has been hotly contested, and which has yet to be satisfactorily resolved is how we clearly delineate  between our personal and professional online personas, particularly those of us who both live and work on the web.

We still don’t have this anywhere near to being sorted. A recent post by Malkuth Damkar about the way in which Twitter makes celebrities of us all makes the point that people who would otherwise escape notice are often judged and gossiped about on Twitter in a way that’s disproportionate; as though by conversing publically, we’ve abandoned our right to privacy and respect. Not to mention the recent furore concering hapless British Twitterer Paul Chambers who jokingly threatened to blow up an airport ,then found himself jobless and facing criminal charges, which is an entirely separate can of worms.

Media and marketing website Mumbrella recently covered an exchange on Twitter between a journalist (of sorts) and the personal account of someone working in PR, as evidence of a sometimes tricky relationship between the two disciplines.

While naturally journalists often choose to ignore context and nuance for the sake of a good headline, this seemed a particularly unfair conflation of public domain and public interest.  The journalist has a relatively large public profile and is employed by a media organisation, arguably making her tweets our business; the other person is not – and public or no, her personal Twitter account exists independently of her employer.

It served as an excellent example of this rather messy grey area. I’ve personally hired people because of their significant digital presence – people who came to my attention because of the way in which they communicated online and their degree of influence. And I’ve been more than happy for these people to use their talents for the good of the company, for example by sharing content to their personal networks, using data gathered from their accounts etc.

By creating a social media usage policy that, reasonably enough, prohibited any mention of confidential or sensitive information, I could, as a boss, be reasonably sure my team were clear about what would be appropriate to share via both the corporate and personal accounts and allowed common sense to guide their behaviour in the grey areas on an ad-hoc basis.

But I think with hindsight I sometimes got it wrong. On one occasion I effectively muzzled a team member who had a long standing online stoush with another public figure, arguing that as he linked to the company website from his Twitter bio, this feud would reflect poorly on the company.  I now think that I should have suggested he remove the link, and made clear he was operating under his own auspices and his views were not shared by his employer.

Non-celebrities with large Twitter followings and extensive personal networks have generally developed them through communicating interesting content in an expressive manner, with a distinct voice and point of view.  Crucially, this influence is built up over time, not on the company dime.

By allowing employees to use their personal influence to share content, engage communities and achieve corporate objectives while simultaneously restricting the individual’s right to express a contentious view or enter into critical discourse, the company is attempting to have its cake and eat it.   Not only is this problematic from an ethical standpoint, but it’s also ultimately illogical: a toothless tiger can only maintain its edge for so long before the social network begins to sense inauthenticity and drift away.  I for one choose not to follow people I feel to be little more than an RSS yes-machine.

Drawing the line is essential. My suggestions – and this is a work in progress, subject to review and evolution – is that professional and personal accounts need to be separate. If you refer to your employer in your bio, your account is going to be inextricably linked to their profile, at least in public perception.  So don’t risk it.  Unless there’s a scenario in which your boss will compensate you for allowing the company to bask in your reflected glory – which could mean attributing a dollar value to influence, or specifically stating in your contract that your network is an asset the company will be able to use during the life of your contract with them – then be very wary of using your own account as another channel for sharing corporate content – whether on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else. A profile that’s specifically you @your company might be one way of resolving this, or by using shared corporate accounts.

Because nobody wants to end up like Tennessee Ernie…

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store…

Everyday’s a schoolday: what I learned from Hopenhagen.

11 Dec

Last week I submitted a bid to be the HuffPost citizen journalist at Copenhagen.  All in all, it was rather a wild ride, beset by obstacles, weird moments, highs and lows…

I didn’t win, but I learnt a lot, very fast, which I think counts as a win overall.

This isn’t sour grapes – the guy that got the gig was so much more deserving of it than I (good luck David Kroodsma!) but knowledge is power, so I wanted to share my ‘key learnings’, (to use a hideous phrase aptly described as “what an ‘opinion’ becomes when spoken by an idiot“).

It’s scary out there.

I’ve often had a tendency to be impatient with consumer-facing companies who are reluctant to dip their toes into the ocean of the social web, taking the view that if as a brand, you’re already being talked about, like it or not, and a decision not to participate means you relinquish not only control but the ability to respond or learn.

However, my experience of effectively putting myself in exactly that position gave me a new appreciation for the fact that giving up control is a scary thing to do. The internet can be a hostile and terrifying place.  I got some negative comments on my Facebook profile, I got hate mail – ok, only one email, but that was one more than I’ve ever got before.  If you put yourself in the public domain and are aligned to a set of values, there is truly a perception that you’re fair game, that you lose your right to complain about and much less control what people think and say about you. And perhaps that’s fair – which is a thought to be explored elsewhere – but it had never really been brought home to me with such clarity before.  I’m a behind-the-camera person – to find myself stage centre, albeit in a very small way, was new territory, and I think it’s given me some insight that will help me do this on behalf of clients with greater sensitivity in the future.

Of course it was far from all bad -I was truly humbled by the volume of support and positivity I received. Thanks people; you’re amazing!

Usability Uber Alles

I heard from a number of people that they found the HuffPo voting process incredibly difficult to use.  You had to sign up an account to be able to register, but that was unclear; the ‘log in with Twitter’ function allowed you to log in but didn’t then count your vote unless you had a pre-existing HuffPo account linked to that Twitter profile; there were seven stages to get to register…in terms of usability it was nightmarish.

I’m inferring that this means hundreds of people who were perhaps less engaged would have fallen out early in the process.  If you like me and still found it a hassle, how much less likely is a stranger to bother completing the journey?

(Although my mum managed to vote, so perhaps we are spoilt and impatient internet people with unreasonable expections..?)

Cheats never prosper

There was a high level of vote spamming, a few contenders sabotaging other entrants’ videos by ranking them poorly and generally a fair bit of the sort of behaviour you’d expect from YouTube trolls rather than people on a mission to save the planet.  I was miffed, but while it certainly damaged my chances of making it to Copenhagen, the people responsible for the nefariousness didn’t win either, so while I’m a loser, I’m a loser with my principles intact.

Content really and truly is king

Australia was late to the Hopenhagen party, so I got my entry in on the day submissions closed and with only two days on the campaign trail before voting closed.

I made a rather hurried video and frankly, it wasn’t much cop. As you can doubtless tell, I’m rather awkward in front of the camera and my editing skills were rusty.  I had some last minute help from some kind and brilliant people but essentially, the film was pretty bad.  The concept was good – it’s an homage to an incredible Argentinian film (link pending) but it fell down at execution. What did that mean?  It meant that there was little or no way it could travel outside my network.  The votes I got were as a result of the goodwill and friendship of people I interact with on a personal level, but the moment the content left my own network, it failed.  Second tier networks relied on that next group’s personal influence, but this influence became weaker and weaker because it wasn’t backed up by something anyone wanted to share.

My asking my friend to vote for me is fine – people probably voted for me without needing to quality check the content – that’s how friendship works. But my friend then asking someone who doesn’t know me to vote is less compelling, and without something amazing to share (on top of the barriers to voting already outlined), there is no possibilty that my friend’s friend is going to pass on the message to their friends.  I forgot to press the ‘go viral’ button, if you will.

Let go

I learnt something I perhaps once knew but had forgotten: the heady, intoxicating joy and power of seizing the day, taking risks and daring to try. I’m a perfectionist by nature, and creating something sub-par and sending it out into the world with my name attached was genuinely painful. But on balance, without trying, I would never have learnt so much, been overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness of so many people, and on a more prosaic level, the message about climate change would not have travelled as far and wide as it did.  It was a clever word of mouth / social media campaign by Ogilvy: winning the competition was so much less important than getting people talking, hopefully inspiring them to think about climate change, take action, take back the power.  And in that respect, it was a resounding success.

Now all we need to do is save the planet…

Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it – Goethe

Especial thanks to Natalie, Dermot, Ky, Gavin, Barry and Felix

Hopenhagen – my hope

2 Dec

Hope. It’s such a small word for something so important.

Hope sustains us through the dark times; it’s what remains when all else is lost. It’s powerful yet fragile – when things go wrong we talk about our hopes being dashed, crushed, trampled upon…In a secular age when we laugh at superstition, we still cross our fingers, make a wish as we blow out our birthday candles and knock on wood.

Hopenhagen recognises that it’s the one emotion we all share; it’s at the heart of what it means to be human.

This campaign is so vital – the summit at Copenhagen is genuinely the most important meeting of our lives. And while few of us may be directly involved in the summit itself, or the decision making that will occur there, it’s up to all of us to make our voices heard, to stand up and be counted and ensure our leaders know we demand action – decisive, strong, affirmative action on the future of our planet.

I’m submitting my application to be Hopenhagen’s citizen journalist representative because I believe it’s my responsibility to get the message out, to make sure the important information reaches the wider world and to empower people to tell their stories and to demand change. I’ve been trying to take better care of my environment for a number of years now, but I’ve begun to realise just how dependent we all are on one another. There’s a bigger story to tell, many voices to be heard and thanks to the unprecedented reach and accessibility of new technologies and the power of the social web, we have the best chance yet of enabling the voices of the many to be heard by our leaders.

Through my involvement in the Tcktcktck campaign I’ve seen the potential for change when people across the globe make the decision to speak out on why it’s so crucial for us to act, and to act now, and we’re only at the start of our journey.

There are so many worthwhile organisations all striving to reach the same goal; TckTckTck, Vote Earth, Hopenhagen and many more, locally and globally. What really matters is not which group you lend your support to, or which petition you sign. What matters is that you add your voice, take action, reach out and tell someone else about it today.

We don’t have all the time in the world, and we can’t allow ourselves to be swayed by commerce, apathy or to be daunted by the sheer size of the task ahead. We know that the cost of action may be high, but the cost of inaction is unknowable; it’s a risk we can’t afford to take, for our own sake and the sake of future generations.

Hope is all that was left after Pandora unleashed the box of ills upon the world, to succour us and keep us going when it seems the way ahead is too tough. We none of us know exactly how climate change will impact us, but it is our duty to take responsibility for the planet, our effect upon it, and more than this, to make a choice about the kind of world we want to live in. I want to live in a world that cares; that makes decisions that will benefit the many, not the few; a world where we are united in our desire to make positive change in our lives.

This is my hope.

It would be absolutely amazing if you’d vote for me.  Thank you.

Why FourSquare is anything but…

24 Nov

FourSquare. In the immortal words of Thierry Henry, “let me break it down”.

FourSquare defines itself as “part friend finder, part social city guide, part nightlife game’.

The team claim that they “wanted to build something that not only helps you keep up with your friends, but exposes you to new things in and challenges you to explore cities in different ways.”

It’s a geosocial site (and application) which enables you to ‘check in’ at places and share details about your activity. More importantly – and this is what sets it apart from BrightKite et al -  it syncs info about local businesses to enable you to share your favourite places, give people tips about the things and places you love and create a to a to-do list based on the recommendations of friends and neighbours.

The opportunity for business is enormous, allowing brands to reward consumers who are advocates, to monitor, engage with and respond to users and to further cement consumer loyalty, e.g. offering you a free coffee if you check in at your local cafe four days in a row.

The B2C commercial imperative is obvious – can businesses afford not to have a presence on FourSquare?

The reason it’s so addictive – and will, I predict, become massive in Australia – is that it’s framed as a competition, with  just enough hipster credibility not to feel contrived.

You become the Mayor of a certain location by checking in there more frequently than anyone else, are given badges for particular activity (adding new places, spiked activity at night etc.) and user statistics are updated weekly on each city’s leaderboard (currently Likeomg, Warlach and I are amongst Sydney’s biggest hitters) – thus appealing directly to the ego and plugging in to our desire to be seen as influential, in the know, hyperconnected digital douchebags….

Rewarding users by offering them ultimately meaningless and arbitrary trophies demonstrates an extremely sophisticated understanding of the psyche of the early adopter/ digital native on the part of the creators.

It’s been hit by so much activity in Australia since its launch (in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne) on Friday that the servers needed to be upgraded, and I am still finding much of the functionality within the website is limited and buggy. It works like  a charm on iPhone though, which is after all where the heaviest use will occur.

Scoble says FourSquare is the next big thing, suggesting it’s as significant as the Twitter API release:

“It enhances your experience in each location. Check in at the Half Moon Bay Ritz and you’ll see tons of “tips” that people have left for you. Francine Hardaway, for instance, tells you where the best dog beachis. I tell you how to save $40 on smores. Other people tell you that Tres Amigos is the best Mexican place nearby”

This certainly looks like the first site developed for internet on the move that’s actually going to make it to the mainstream – the execution isn’t quite there yet but it seems to be well thought through at a strategic level, cleverly rationalised and with the key component -monetisation – built in from the beginnning.

FourSquare: pressing the “go viral” button any day now….


The Charter for Compassion: using our social media powers for good

16 Nov

I was honoured to be asked to participate in the Charter for Compassion short film in which a number of Australians gave their views on what compassion means to them. It was very rewarding to watch as social web tools were pressed into the service of doing good in the world, with no commercial objective.

More importantly, it was a genuinely humbling experience, not only because of the stories I heard during the filming, but also because thinking about the word and the concept made me realise how deeply held my belief in the importance of compassion is, how I often overlook this amidst the noise and distraction of my busy modern existence and how fervently I believe I need to act with compassion in order to feel a sense of ease and self-worth.

The brief connections and tiny interactions we carry out every day are charged with potential; each one is the chance to change someone’s life for the better. What I do at work is all about these moments of contact, and since I have no problem with the notion of “adding value” to interactions on behalf of a brand, or in a commercial context, why don’t I invest every single moment in my personal life with the same weight?

Because I’m tired, or preoccupied, or running late, because trying to understand why you’re being obnoxious is more effort than dismissing you, because if I give two dollars to this guy I’ll feel guilty for not doing the same to the next person who asks, because frankly I don’t like the look of you, because I’m having a irksome day…these are all reasons to not act with compassion.

But I want to live in a world where strangers smile at each other, where children don’t die of neglect in the middle of large cities, where we help isolated, damaged people rather than ignoring them, where we welcome outsiders into our communities, where we reach out with kindness to someone every single day of our lives. If I want to live in this world, I have to create it myself, and this is my commitment to doing that.  It’s not an avowal of sainthood, just a recognition that all good practice comes from mindfulness.

Because one day I might be down, and I hope you’ll be there to lift me up.

I was privileged enough to be interviewed along with some inspiring people:

In order of appearance, they are: Adriano Zumbo, (me), Dr Stephen Saunders, Neil Perry, Melissa Leong, Barry Saunders, Mitzi Macintosh, Mark Pollard, Julie Posetti, Venerable Sujato Bhikkhu, Gavin Heaton, Reverend Raymond Minniecon, Bronwen Clune, Reverend Bill Crews, Rabbi Mendel Castell, Graham Long and Tim Burrowes.

Learn more and affirm the Charter now at charterforcompassion.org.

 

Thanks to Natalie for inviting me to get involved.

Australians on Compassion from TED Prize on Vimeo.
The Charter is here:

All the #Media140 that’s fit to print

6 Nov

One of the recurring themes at the Media 140 conference in Sydney has been redefining the function of the journalist.

One perspective is journalist as curator – providing context, sifting and interpreting data to allow information to travel beyond our immediate horizons.

As I’m generally a helpful, kind and conscientious human being, not satisfied with merely providing the Twitterverse with peerless live reportage of the Media140 event, I have put together a list of the most interesting coverage of the two day conference for your edification and delight…

(N.B this is a starting point – I’ll be adding to the list as I find new content.  Please feel free to make suggestions, and apologies for any glaring omissions)

The chatter on Twitter…

Laurel Papworth says journalists need to tear up their press cards -”it was always our content and we’re taking it back”.  It’s about the human narrative…

Linen Suave on why the blogger  / journalism polarisation is a little like fighting bears.

Kate Taylor wants to see some innovation based love-ins…

Barry Saunders looks at Turnbull’s mode of engagement with his constituents

Valerio Veo is the bastard child of new and old media

Jay Rosen tells journalists to grok it before you rock it.

Crikey on the News journalist’s oversharing

The ABC coverage of Turnbull’s ghost tweets.

Kate Carruther’s pithy summary of the first day’s discussions

The Twitter usage during the Iranian elections case study from @riy

Using Google Wave rather than Twitter for the conference backchannel

Derek Barry on the ABC’s Mark Scott on the importance of new media and the ABC’s social media policy

Duncan Riley is enraged at the idea he’s not earning his clams online.

Jude Mathurine’s presentation on why the future of journalism is in mobile social networks in Africa.

Bernard Keane on Ghettos of agreement.

Margaret Simon’s coverage and roundup of Media140 on The Content Makers (HT Kate Taylor)

Stilgherrian’s Media 140 bookmarks on Delicious. (edit: Stil has also added what can only be described as the motherlode of Media 140 links to his blog.)

….and my guest post about authenticity over objectivity on Mumbrella.

The defining photo of the conference taken by Neerav Bhatt – Mark Scott.

ABC's Mark Scott- Neerav's Media140 photos

Growing up online: why the days of our digital adolescence are numbered

29 Sep

The internet is still in its infancy, and our use of it is still developing.  It’s an exciting time to be alive; I’d argue that no single technological advance since the printing press has transformed our culture, normative behaviours and society as profoundly.  New possibilities and new ways of interacting are opening up every day.

However, this cuts both ways, and it’s depressing to see that one consequence of the new is a marked increase in the amount of genuinely awful behaviour performed by otherwise functional adults.  Seeing ill-advised tweets, oversharing via Facebook updates and emotive personal posts, I’m reminded of the giddy immediacy of my teenage years, in which I existed in a state of selfish isolation, immersed in the frenzy of the Now.

Nothing was more important than my feelings that very second; I had no sense of, or interest in a broader context or that my actions could have consequences of any significance.  And this seems to be the case for many people online; the fact one feels this way at this moment is justification enough for broadcasting that information to the planet.

I feel, therefore I post.

Hal Niedzviecki refers to this phenomenon as “Peep Culture,” suggesting that we’re witnessing the tabloidization of everyday life.

Perhaps the logical progression of our paparazzi-fuelled, celebrity-obsessed culture is to have us believing that revelations of a wincingly personal nature are everyone’s business.

There again, we’re not taking out one page ads in the Times or employing a town crier to announce our break-ups or our shitty days at work.  This behaviour is only occurring online.

I’d argue that it’s due to a combination of factors:

1) the false sense that these online spaces aren’t ‘serious’ and don’t have real life impact: the value of communication online is somehow seen as less than offline interaction

2) the ease, speed and accessibility with which one can post anything from anywhere. An emotion that probably would have dissipated by the time you’d put pen to paper and started looking for a stamp is shared, out there and un-retractable in three seconds flat.

3) an erroneous belief that these spaces are somehow lawless, frontier territory where all bets are off, crimes go unpunished and an outlaw-esque anonymity can be preserved

A post on the Social Media Law Student blog makes the point that

People will express themselves, albeit to their own detriment, through numerous mediums whether by electronic communication, acts of aggression, verbal comments, physical actions, written letters, and more.  Social media networks such as Facebook and MySpace are not to blame for sheer stupidity…

…but they do make stupid actions harder to retract and easier to prove.

Our actions have implications, consequences; the spaces may be virtual, but this is very real.

Thirty-five percent of employers reported finding content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire the candidate; Facebook evidence was used to convict gang members in Britain who posted photos of themselves posing with guns; Australian courts allow legal documents to be served via Facebook; lawyers have begun to use social profiles in divorce cases.  Four Awkward Moments on Facebook is hilarious, unless you’re one of the people involved: I can only imagine the lacerating sense of shame and hurt they must have experienced.

Part Two: Imagining the future ( a proto-post)

I’m confident that the next generation will view our bumbling online interactions with humour and, I hope, some pity, much in the way that I view photographs of my parents in their heyday; fondly and with affectionate mockery.  I can’t predict what these new models of behaviour will look like but I wonder whether our notions of public and private space will be fundamentally redefined; will a new set of boundaries be created or will these constructs simply have drifted into irrelevance?

Will the citizens of the future live in digital glass houses?
When everything is on display and there’s no separation between your inside voice and outside voice, will people’s personal (increasingly public lives) cease to have any interest or relevance – is the sense of intimacy we use to build social cohesion in part derived from the sense one is holding privileged information?  In this landscape, our perceptions of each other would be based on new criteria and new values not related to how much we earn or who we’re screwing.  Although I find this a faintly terrifying prospect, I can’t help but feel this re-imagining of our future is the most exciting, the most radical (and the least likely to occur).

Alternatively, will this new generation, kids who’ll take in the digital space with their mother’s milk become the New New Puritans? There is surely a possibility they will enact a backlash against the over-availability and over-sharing of information, images and personal data.  With public figures as influential as Obama warning schoolkids to think about the long term consequences of the stuff they share on Facebook, will we see a generation of locked down profiles, gated social spaces and private Twitter streams.  Will we become paranoiac data-hoarders, carefully considering every piece of information dispersed through the web?

Or – returning to Planet Reality – will we just have to grow up, embrace the new and reign in some of the worst excesses of overly disclosive behaviour in favour of a more reasoned approach?  Being a teenager is fun, but we can’t remain in a virtual NeverNeverland forever.
It may be more staid and a little less compelling than the ambulance-chasing, Schadenfreudian thrill of watching someone crash and burn online, but perhaps fewer hearts and reputations damaged beyond repair is worth losing out on a little second-hand salaciousness for….

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