Thoughtful Social Networking
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” – Mark Twain
I was talking to my dad on the phone the other day and after some dramatic buildup, he told me he read my blog. He read this one, but was referring to a few blog posts on MySpace. I had been waiting for this moment for a while now. I have Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace accounts and update the first two on a regular basis. The MySpace account is a holdover from when it was the preferred way to connect with your friends online. Now, it seems, MySpace is used only by bands and creepers. I haven’t deleted my account because it gives me another presence on the web and another link in Google when you search for “Zach Firestone.”
It didn’t bother me at all knowing my dad was checking out these pages, because I thought about it at length in the past and came to the conclusion that even though there was some slightly risque pictures and posts, there was nothing I was embarrassed about. Dad was concerned with one blog post in particular at the top of the page that used an expletive in the title. I hadn’t thought much of it in the past, but after hearing his concern I agreed that it was unnecessary and changed it while we continued our talk. He went on to tell me some of the comments on my wall and pictures may not be in my best interest as a young professional trying to make a name for himself. He went on to tell me about when he was just starting as a salesman in the billboard industry, one employee recommended that everyone shave their beards and mustaches. His reasoning was that the facial hair wasn’t worth losing out on a piece of business from a client that may be scared off by a well kept fu manchu.
At first, I resisted vehemently. I told him that none of the posts were portraying me in a negative light and, as a matter of fact, I didn’t care if I lost a client based on a stupid comment. We went back and forth and ended the call with an understanding that even though we disagreed, his intentions were in my best interest, as always. That night I went through my MySpace page and started to understand where he was coming from. Then, I started to think about the fact that if these networks weren’t important to me, like I said, why was I making such a big deal about making some changes. I decided to make some tweaks to the MySpace page and if you look now you won’t see any comments or blog posts.
This whole ordeal got me thinking about the way I use social networks. I know I haven’t always had the most useful tweets or posts. In fact, some of them have been downright pointless. I found a great article that talks about how social networks have become the equivalent of brain farts for most people. Posting pictures of food, random useless thoughts, and borderline inappropriate videos are all things I’m guilty of. We post what we think without thinking about it and have been overloaded with TMI. The reason most people migrated over from MySpace to Facebook is because it was more of a sophisticated network free of the cheesy profiles and animated .gifs. But slowly it has become a haven for top 5 lists and movie quizzes.
Social networks can be amazing tools for spreading information. One reason they have become so popular is because the feeds are like the front page of CNN.com, but with news from and about your friends and family. Rather than going to RottenTomatoes.com to get a review from someone you don’t even know, you can just read tweets from your friends that have commented on the movie. Social networks could be used to display potentially life saving information, such as the spread of a dangerous virus like H1N1. The key to developing this technology is posting useful information.
The question becomes, how do you want your friends to view you? Would you say out loud what you are posting from the privacy of your house? Personally, I am going to make a more conscious effort to post quality over quantity…with a few movie quotes thrown in for good measure.
Useful Links:
How to Ruin Facebook Friendships
How to Behave: New Rules for Highly Evolved Humans
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 12:26 am and is filed under Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.