i've been fascinated/obsessed with social web media for a few years now.. and it'd be easy to rationalize my involvement with sites like Myspace & Facebook simply as necessary internet marketing, but it goes a lot deeper than that.. more than anything, i love observing and hopefully being able to understand/predict trends with these sites.. i find that being a successful entrepreneur simply comes down to understanding people vs. situations, and understand how different demographics consume & utilize the internet is a huge part of that nowadays.
my best friend (who helps me with most of my endeavours) complained that lots of these new services confused the expletive out of her.. well, my response is that the complexicity of the current social web media matrix can only be matched by the increasing complexicity of our social networks.. take me for example, albeit probably a rather unsual one:
as a photographer, i promote & work at club events every weekend.. during the week, i do shoots for various clients and a whole slew of glamour models in various cities.. from time to time, i dabble with web design and small-business consultation when close friends ask for favours and refer me to select clients.. last but not least, i used to be heavily involved with music.. so as it stands, i have a pretty large network that ranges from 19-24 yr olds (mostly local students, some young professionals) who come out to our events, 16-50 yr old males & 14-24 yr old females all over Canada who follow my models & my photography work, a relatively small number of local business owners in drastically different industries, and then a relatively small but passionate group of supporters spread all over the world who've followed me since the days of PRIZM (from 2003-2005).. with that in mind, think about how i'd utilize the web as a publisher.
on a personal level, i'm extremely passionate about both basketball & music - i'm an avid listener of everything from Das Efx to Warren G to Nas to Lil Wayne and i've grown to love everything from Daft Punk to Radiohead to Jason Mraz to mstrkrft.. i've also developed an interest in personal well-being and general health of late..with this in mind, think about how i'd spent my time on the internet as a consumer.
you get the picture. everyone's different, yet as all of our lives become busier, we all still strive to connect with one another more than ever. as a medium, social web media can help publishers reach their respective audiences effectively while helping consumers find exactly what their looking for efficiently - THAT is the power of web 2.0.
at the forefront of the maelstrom that has become the global social web media scene are Twitter & Digg, two completely different services that i've grown particularly fond of..
Twitter is a micro-blogging service that lets users stay connected with their friends through the exchange of quick 140-character-or-less answers to one simple question: what are you doing? i paraphrased that from their introductory statement, but i won't lie - when i first came across that, i thought Twitter would be pretty stupid. i mean, who really needs to know when someone has a ham sandwich, or is buying a newspaper at the convenience store? isn't Facebook bad enough with its onslaught of mundane status updates?! but, the more i read about Twitter, the more value i began to see in it, and then i decided to give it a chance.. like any service or tool, it's all about how you use it. Twitter forces the average user to listen as much as they talk to get the most out of it, which is a refreshing change. i have a fair bit of appreciation for it right now and i've genuinely liked it thus far - i just wish i'd kept my blackberry instead of stubbornly reverting back to my crappy phone coz i liked how small/invinceable it is.. lol.
as for Digg, it is "a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online." pretty refreshing idea, and even if it might not be the only service around that subscribes to that notion, i think Digg does the best job of it. with Digg, users are able to keep up with news, images and videos that are relevant to them, whatever their tastes.. for me, i like staying informed on issues i'm interested in while keeping my nose clear of the irrelevance that floods most news networks, so Digg's a perfect fit..
in conclusion - it's ALL about how you use social media to enrich your life. if you're stupid about it, yes - these sites become quite the timesuck and you probably won't get what you'd like out of either.. after all, when you're a hammer, everything you see becomes a nail ;)
8:09am, a day in the life..
you guessed it - this picture has nothing to do with the article. LOL
