Monday, September 1st, 2008...11:00 am
Will social media lead us to tribes ?
Coud you say you have never googled the name of one of your client, boss, job-candidate, friend ? I am afraid, we are all big-brothering the people we are interested in.
I can see, many reactions to that situation. Many of us hide their heads in sand and some others are trying to see this situation as an opportunity to build personnal brands on the web, others protest and call for legislation… But often legislation uses people problem to give power to strong institutions.
The thing is, controlling one’s image on the web, is not an easy job. Think about the old photos an ancient friends has posted without telling you, the campaign of haters on your blog,… and remember that it is nearly impossible to erase what was once avilable on the web.
Individually, we have interests in building a strong personnal brand, here are three simple tips to do so :
- Make sure of the coherence of your several account on your blog, facebook, linkedin, my space, etc.
- Never try to hide too much, do not forget that your past or hidden field of your life might always come up, it is better to not hide rather than being a liar.
- Explain your own universe : what you see, read, the people you meet, explain your personnality often better than everything you can put that somewhere, some will not like it but some others will be fond of you just for that reason.
For the whole society, that can be seen as the end of privacy. Being less conservative, I would raher see a deep change in the meaning of private life. May be we will learn that people are more complex, more singular than we knew before… May be what was seen like a weakness and we wanted to keep secret will just be a fact without any judgement. That would be interesting if social media would drive us to being more tolerant.
May be that is an optimistic view. Probably, people would build their identity on their social habits and gatherbing themselves around this identity. So kind of tribes will probably appears and will certainly be organized like minorities today. And the power tribes will be the one that will be able to influence others… Any that is still fiction, we have still time to discuss what the future will be like.
Will social media lead us to tribes ?
2 Comments
September 16th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Hi Francois,
I really like the idea that social media is modifying the private sphere in an unprecedented way.
Your idea of how it could make people more tolerant is interesting also, optimistic also… It is true that it could help us see people in a different light, if we pay attention and spend time looking at who is connected with who and who your friend’s friends are… Will that make people more tolerant?
I also think that GenY is probably affected in different ways than older generations… GenY is growing up in a world where the availability of this information is normal… And this no doubt defines in a new way the limits of privacy…
Do you have any current examples on the tribes idea? Or any concrete example that would lead to the tribe idea that you describe ? I would be interested if you developed that idea by giving a few examples… Thanks…
A bientot, Elsie H.
September 17th, 2008 at 8:05 am
@Elsie :Thanx for your comment. Examples of tribes ? Well facebooks groups for exemple are interesting. People join together, they have a leader, a chief, administrators and members and they make a group to defend a style, a point of view or enjoying together an event on the web or elsewhere…
Bloggers ofter do kinds of groups to increase their power in the blogosphere as well…
I think, artists on myspace or experiencing something very tribal, since they put on their space, a link to related spaces. In the end you can surf in a cloud of people that describes a kind of universe or culture. It could be seen as a tribe.
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