Social netwroking is a blind date that needs precaution

Jan 22, 2010

As if a Facebook status update or a Tweet with bad language, half baked perspective and ignorant rant was not enough. One of the recent relationship invites make me wonder whether social media is the new haven for all the disgruntled souls. I can conveniently ignore the overt advertisements inviting blind dates on various networking sites, but am clueless with some weird, strange quirks that let you into places you aren’t supposed to go. How can one fall in love with me just over couple of days of online friendship? It seems organized criminals are using one’s personal information shared on social networking sites in increasingly sophisticated ways to target victims.
Social media even without these gangs can never be a safe zone in a society where conflict resolution is more about compromising than collaborating. I often come across peculiar thought process that seem to shout at your face- “I don’t like your status updates/tweets anymore, not because your or mine literary tastes or social concerns have suddenly changed. My grouse is more with your snub to the common friend in the network who is more close to me.” All this makes me wonder whether we need a primary school of social networking to remind us that we are grown ups now. It is true that social networking is also about community building. But this close knit bonding for the right reasons often turn into wrong reasons when there is an element of subtle lobbying in the process. 
In a free virtual world with no guidelines or regulations, we are getting used to see something online that makes us mad, find something offensive online repetitively nowadays. Bad language, cuss words, half-baked perspective, ignorant rant and much more that often gets to the nerves to react. Somehow I am learning to live with this reality that very much like the real life; problem with opinion online is that everyone has it. Perhaps even Lord Keene could not anticipate that in days to come everybody will be an expert on everything.
For a person like me with firm grounding in conventional means of communication, the conscious decision to switch to new online vehicles—Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook was not based on its decency level any way. The experience of close friends over Orkoot was enough to suggest how a networking site can be a catalyst to behavior pattern shift in a virtual world. But then it was a need to take the clients’ presence to the new age tools. Something that Track2Media Consulting has done quite successfully over the last couple of years.
Over a period of time I started realizing the need of this necessary evil called social media, both at a personal and professional level. I have written extensively over the pros and cons of networking over the medium. I also keep telling the students of mass communication, with whom I interact as guest faculty in some institutes and universities that it is a necessary evil. Precaution is a must if you want to play safe. 
Professionally as a brand communication expert and as an activist at personal level, my caustic, sarcastic and angry response is often not in sync with the opportunity cost of ignoring it. I often allow myself to get offended and outraged, and the activist in me just can’t resist giving it back to the offence. Though, of late, I have started questioning myself whether the person has been worth my reaction. Has my reaction only given him credibility? Still by and large I don’t care for the cost-benefit analysis of my reputation in a world where, as they say, those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter. Social media is big enough for all kinds of characters to stay and engage.
After all, social media is like a blind date. You can only wish that she turns out to be a hot chick. On your part you get your basics right and arrive in style in a blind date. Again you can only hope this date with hot chick doesn’t get goofed up. But if the prayers are not answered, who cares. And who would like to carry the blind date analogy to its logical, ridiculous extreme? If the conversation online is not right, or if the other person carries a placard suggesting he/she is the best, you just communicate for a while and walk your way, without any plans of engaging yourself.
I treat my online relationship in a similar way, and any interaction beyond this is always a slow and steady process. Handling a relationship is fragile and nurturing the respect takes its own time and judgment. It hardly matters if my friends’ list changes completely over a period of time, particularly in the event of failure to agree to disagree. As a matter of principle in my now almost two years of social & professional networking online, I have never asked someone for personal information. I have exchanged phone numbers only when regular online interaction has led to some common meeting grounds and the other person feels like connecting with me at a personal or professional level.
I have also never asked a virtual friend of the opposite sex to show me her real picture as to how she looks like. I have also never removed someone from the friends list just because her real face is not visible on the site. I have rather respected the individual choice of the person to be there online the way she wants to be. Her decision to keep anonymous might be guided by her desire to play safe in a world where photographs of even celebrities are morphed with nude pictures nowadays. Who am I to intrude into someone’s safety zones, just because she added me as a friend? For me these personal details matter if we become close enough to think of meeting outside the virtual zones. But such friendships are few and far between.
In general I am nowadays careful with who my friends are; they could turn out to be my worst enemies. There are some wonderful people whom I have met online and with whom I have interacted and built a relationship. However, there are also other people who misrepresent who they are and what their intentions are. In order to be safe, some of my female friends don’t put their real pix and personal details to be known to all. After all, they need to be constantly cognizant about who they trust and what they divulge online. It is important not to trust online connections before building a strong and solid foundation in the relationship.
Being safe in the world of social media is a choice that should not offend genuine people in the friend list at all. We have the example of Steve Boggan who discovered about the past life of his girlfriend of 12 years, Suzanne Halam, just by using the internet. It took just one hour for internet experts to find out almost every private detail of this woman's life. That includes her friends, education, embarrassing pictures, former boyfriends and long-forgotten relatives.
This happened because, in common with millions of people in Britain, Suzanne was using the social networking sites Facebook and Friends Reunited, and had signed up to the business networking site LinkedIn and Flickr, the photo-sharing website. Armed with this information, criminals could have also used her identity to commit fraud or resurrect minute details of her past, her movements and friendships to lure her into scams or even dangerous liaisons. It could have been used to con her into revealing her bank details and credit card numbers.
After all, even the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, a man not known for worrying about internet surfers’ privacy, suggested recently that young people might want to change their identities in the future in order to separate themselves from a past lived too openly on the internet.
The relationship invite that I received was thoroughly investigated by my e-sister (I found this kiddo online). She found objectionable stuff over there and hence asked me to block it. But I realized how these criminal gangs are carefully fishing for victims online. In the past, they would have sent out thousands and thousands of spam emails in a scattergun fashion — and many still do. These are called phishing scams where you are awarded millions of $ for having used the email. Some of them invite fake requests from banks asking people to confirm their account details, passwords and so on. The hope is that, once in a while, someone would be silly enough to reply.
Fortunately, I was not silly, will never be so. A love affair over couple of days of online friendship? Oh! Give me a break. Instinctively I am now addicted with social media and professionally it has benefitted me as well. Therefore, it is no longer a matter of choice to stay connected, but the need as well. However, being less than couple of years old on the social networking sites, I am fast learning the nuances of the medium. I hope the learning curve makes me careful in selection of friends/contacts in future, benefits Track2Media Consulting in its business and goads the mass communication students in the right direction with my shared experiences.

Bihar elections and Barack Obama effect

July 16, 2006

Can Bihar, predominantly seen as one of the most underdeveloped states of India in collective consciousness replicate Barack Obama’s model? I understand the question itself will be seen as cynicism but wait. Give it a thought and there will appear some parallel in these two different poles on various given parameters of governance, development and overall human development index. My assessment, or rather I should say optimism is not based on the phenomenal and unbelievable growth rate of Bihar in times of global recession. Of course, the GDP projection of 11 per cent by an eminent economist and 16.5 per cent by the Central Statistics office would definitely be a cause of envy even to the world’s super power in America.
However, my above assumption is not based on the reports of Bihar revival by the now unquestionable turnaround man in the Chief Minster Nitish Kumar. What has actually surprised me is the sheer presence of the state, its governance and its politics on social networking sites like the Facebook and Twitter. When the Economist magazine analyzed how politicians around the world from Venezuela to Japan and from Greece to Chile are using social media tools to get out their messages to constituents and voters, they had actually no idea about the penetration of the medium further deep.
Considering that LinkedIn was established in 2003, Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006, it no doubt seems to be a fast forward march by the politicians of the state. With some of them without any background in the formal university level education, it is all the more surprising that they are adapting and accelerating quicker and faster medium for political dialogue.
In a way it spells good for democratic institutions in Bihar where wide engagement combines with open sharing of information. It is clearly an issue, as social recommendation becomes bigger the challenge is to engage individuals deeply enough that they will escalate from passive viewer to active participant. Most of the Bihar centric discussion revolves around the performance of Nitish Kumar government and the forthcoming elections. By extension this also applies to those who aim to unseat him.
My Facebook wall is generally full of heated discussions on Bihar elections nowadays. What seems to be the result of the vocal nature of Biharis in general and educated and migrated non resident Biharis in particular is actually more than what meets the eyes. It is not that only the educated Biharis who have migrated to metropolitan cities for a decent living are the ones who are demand drivers of Bihar debate. The young lot in the state with limited access to electricity and even lesser access to internet are as much active on these sites as their non resident counterparts. 
The question as to why development in the backdrop of politics and elections are the only issues to be discussed automatically comes into the mind. Perhaps the answer lies in the restlessness of the youth in the state, which had for around a couple of decades been clueless, have suddenly found a medium to air their grievances. Many politicians from the state too have sensed this transformation and want the first-movers-advantage in the cyber space networking.
The moot point here is that whether it is a natural progression of the state into technology zone or the political parties have taken this first-movers-advantage a bit too seriously. On the basis of Facebook and Twitter discussion Prima Facie it seems a carefully crafted social media campaign has been launched by at least two parties (JD (U) and BJP) in power, with Congress social media campaign racing up along the charisma of Rahul Gandhi, while the other two players (RJD and LJP) seem to be clueless as to what is this hype all about.
My assumption, however, proved to be wrong when some more searches found the presence of even Laloo yadav and Ramvilas Paswan on the Facebook. Not only this, individual ministers and MLAs in the state with relatively less exposure to the technology and global obsession with social networking too have got their own website done, with some of them adding dynamic features. It seems everybody is omnipresent on various social networking sites; even the illiterate ones too have social media managers for shadow boxing.
Easy to dismiss, but less easy to master; the mantra of social media is perhaps yet to come of age in Bihar politics. But its growing influence and ubiquity, particularly among younger voters, cannot be ignored. The complications of this new reality are that 18- to 24-year-olds are not prepared to consume political messages passively. The catalysts to this transformation have been the mainstream media that are largely into the mode of broadcast and not conversation.
The 2010 Bihar campaign can prove to be India’s first true social media electoral cycle, if the momentum picks up and reflects some tangible vote swing. Whether the JD (U) uses these tools to their maximum advantage or whether the BJP or Congress figure out how to employ social media to explain incumbent policies and rally their base will be analyzed in-depth following the November elections. It may not prove to be India’s first true internet campaign, won and lost Obama-style, Bihar elections nonetheless have a distinct Barack Obama effect this time around. 

Media and Twitter

16th May, 2010

Ever since my last post about Twitter and its overuse/misuse as a defacto public address system http://track2media.blogspot.com/2010/04/we-twitter.html, dated 22nd April, I have been flooded with extreme reactions. While some of the followers and friends from the online community agree that its use as a public address system by people in public life, like Lalit Modi and Shashi Tharoor will undermine the sanctity of democratic institutions, there is another set of people who have vehemently condemned the view point. “Don’t blame the medium for human follies,” is the argument in general. Actually one of the friends from the online community wrote a blog post on the issue with the same title and started a discussion thread on the Linkedin.
The series of arguments and counter-arguments had gone unnoticed had I not sensed a profile fixation in the thought process on the subject. While those who supported the theory of twitter role being confined to sharing and expressing professional info belonged to various professions, most of the die-hard tweet community was from media and communications. It seems to be a revolution of sorts in a country where the advent of computers in the mid ‘90s led to a number of journalists getting axed out of the system since they could not adapt to the new technology.
Coming back to the core issue of Twitter being overused/misused, do media and communication professionals give the devil more than its due? I have already analysed on this blog last year, July 17, as to how over reliance on social media only reflects strategic communication dilemma http://track2media.blogspot.com/2009/07/over-reliance-on-social-media-reflects.html. It seems the uncensored nature of the medium is something that is driving the new breed of media and communication professionals crazy for the medium.
The industry facts and ground realities are actually hilarious, to say the least. Last year the PR head of an Agency was replaced by a less experienced, and arguably less competent, person on the merit of his tweet knowledge. The management may have been awed by his tall claims of changing the way they used to function through the use of new age technologies, like Twitter. The tech savvy professional who tweets more often than even some of the celebrities promised to work on the expectation management of the clients as well and shift focus from the traditional media coverage. That appeared too fancy and tempting to an Agency that had been at the receiving end of clients for poor media coverage and lack of quality exposure. However, the clients were not amused by the tweet head of the Agency and his shelf life could not be more than a year.
Another practitioner of Brand Strategy and Management was recently caught off guard in a presentation where he emphasised the need for the use of new age communicational tools like the Twitter. What this smart operator had failed to realise was that the corporate house had their own internal team for the purpose of online reputation management. When they did a google check on his credentials, before inviting him for the formal presentation, they found out that he had a healthy follower list of five.
Some of the PR professionals are regularly into the habit of tweeting before every press conference. However, I have often noticed that none of their followers are actually the beat reporters for whom it has been tweeted. That points to the core issue as to whether Twitter is to express or to impress. For the new breed of media and communication professionals it seems to be a tool to impress. They are probably compensating for the failure of their previous generation to adapt to the new age technology with computer. And that is something I find quite funny. Isn’t?

We the Twitter

22nd April, 2010

It entered into the public space as a humble notice board, made inroads into our private space with the hook of fan followers, gradually made its presence felt with occasional scoops posted by the celebrities, started spreading its tentacles into the neo-techy masses and before we realised it had driven the otherwise largely technophobic nation into its tweet zone. From politicians to cricketers, film stars to media professionals; it seems everybody wants to tweet and be followed. Many have become addicted to the social media site and can’t seem to stay away from it. So, what is Twitter?

Is it the new face of expression in a society groping for recognition beyond mere identity of “We the Nation”? Has India readily accepted twitter as the new face of tangible recognition? More the followers the better standing you have in the society, so it seems. Facts suggest more than what twitter is supposed to stay for. In a developing society like India one may have to run from pillar to post to get a ration card or any other identity card, something that is not worthy of flaunting. But for the twitter exposed lot a twitter id is much easier to get and more fancy to flaunt.

When you first look at Twitter, it seems as though it is just a large bunch of random thoughts. It is actually much more than that. It is over hyped, over exposed and over estimated channel of communication. Twitter is being used and abused like no other media vehicle. It is true that one of the biggest scams of the era involving Cricket, Politics, Money and Sex has been exposed on twitter only. But twitter can’t take the credit of any worthy contribution to this. Had the mainstream media not followed it up, this twitter post would have gone as unnoticed as thousands of others in the day.

After all, everybody is tweeting. It seems twitter is the new public address system in the country and every one is busy twitting good, bad and ugly without any censorship-legal, ethical or whatever. However, this is India and definitely the soci0-political spectrum is not as tweety as France where the President asks for public opinion on political and personal agenda through his tweets.

Twitter, as a matter of fact, has been snowballing into the political spectrum of the nation ever since a Union Minister with a fair degree of international exposure during his stint with the United Nations started tweeting his not-so-politically-correct views on various issues. Nobody had then imagined that twitter posts are going to be his nemesis in the days ahead. The accusation against Union Minister Shashi Tharoor by the IPL Commissioner and Mastermind of Gambling Racket called IPL Cricket is just the precursor of the emerging trends of Indian politics. The victim of tweets, Indian politics has added a new vocabulary in its lexicon and vendetta politics will be henceforth referred as Twitter Politics.

The first high-profile casualty of twitter posts is not just the resignation of a Union Minister, or the surfacing of what seems to be the biggest betting racket of India thus far, called the IPL Cricket. The inherent dangers are deep rooted. If tweets are the way to go, I am afraid life in the public space will be less respectful, lesser trustworthy, and even lesser accountable to the democratic institutions. Imagine a minister making policy announcements on twitter rather than in the Parliament. Can a twitter mandate replace the trouble of conducting an exhaustive election procedure?

Probably those who conceptualised the idea of twitter first had no idea as to how BIG IDEA they had been working on. The cost of running a country like India can be brought to almost negligible if twitter has its way. The law makers would not have the trouble of travelling all their way to Parliament from respective constituencies in the remote areas. The easiest possible public address system called twitter is there to take care of the causes and grievances of the nation. Union Budgets will also be tweeted and law makers along with the common man on the streets can retweet their opinion on it.

Twitter was actually meant for interaction limited to commercial and personal reasons. It is now also being used for political and other vested interest purposes. Now that Twitter is in the mainstream, with all of its tentacles reaching as far into society as it does, it is not going anywhere anytime soon. The advocates of tweet politics will soon suggest taking the advantages of twitter and seeing how it can contribute to transform the democratic and institutional fabric of a developing nation like India. Of course, there is a price tag to this universal public address system that demands a thorough cost-benefit analysis. The question is whether the Indian society in its collective consciousness is ready to pay the price of “We the Twitter”?

Social networking or online obsession

“500 plus friends online….the person must be the loneliest creature on the planet”, said a journalist friend on the trend to be open networker and befriending those with whom one has never even met. A very private person and open critic of sharing personal and professional life with unknown people online, he was out rightly dismissing the idea of social and professional networking online. Well, I must admit that the argument has its merit even though I am myself glued to online communities for a large part of my personal and professional hours.
In an honest confession, I must admit that the networking forum like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter plays an influential role in my own social/networking life. I may pretend that I remain absolutely committed on a professional level, but the fact of the matter is that networking sites for me has happened like a deal with an open community. In my otherwise personal and professional life I have maintained a very strict admittance criteria for close friends and family only.
However, Facebook provides me a forum for trivial news share that I am always not very comfortable to discuss in an open forum. LinkedIn and Twitter has further helped me segregate such trivia from the more academic business exchanges I have contributed to, and profited from. Still the argument of my critic friend has forced me to introspect deep. Why??? May be because my growing sense of consciousness, backed by a few social research, has been telling me that the quality of relationships may actually be falling victim to the new-age networking tools.
Without knowing it, or at least without any conscious design, social media has also transmitted loneliness and a sense of social disconnection. In recent years, virtual escapism has effected change in numerous social groups and has given birth to new streams of revenue. Technology has drawn us into our interconnected webs, in the office, on the street, on the park bench, to the point that we exist virtually everywhere except in the physical world.
The quality time spent with friends and peer professionals is gradually getting less and we are subconsciously becoming a victim of internet obsession. Internet and its online communities are by its clinical nature cutting down the more fallible nature of human discourse: emotion, innuendo, political sniping. It lends a more objective, less risk-laden and therefore, I suppose, innocuous form of discussion. It's an ideal channel for those wishing to avoid the intricacies of complex humanity and family ties.
Relationships, both personal and professional, are hard work. Just because someone retweeted your post doesn’t mean you have a workable relationship with that follower. In order to nurture and sustain a viable connection with someone, you must have personal contact that not only reinforces what you are doing but who you are as a person and a professional. Social Media removes you from personal interaction with other people subsequently reinforcing social ineptitude.
Being a student of Freudian school of human emotions, I have always been interested in human presence and reaction and know from experience that reading faces, listening to tone beyond words and pure personal chemistry form the most powerful basis for collaborative and gratifying relationships. I must admit that such a holistic dialogue process cannot be sustained by networking sites alone.
The realization grew deeper in me be the mere phone call of a close friend, whom I have not seen for a long while. An admittedly internet addict in me suddenly felt an emotional chord by the vocal conversation and it gave me the realization of how much I value human interaction; and more importantly, of how much of it was moving away as our collective addiction to online community intensified.
While the online community is, and will remain an important aspect of today’s global networking, I have taken a conscious decision that I will never escape my nature. I'm a humanist, a communicator. Words, expression, nuance have always been the make-up of my character as well as the tools of my trade. Some where the modern day communication had created a widening gap between the conscious and subconscious mind, and it was the physical presence of a journalist friend, a one-to-one discussion that goaded me to bridge this ever widening gap.
I do hope that my peer group who swear by the online reputation management will not consider my conscious decision as an indictment of my proclaimed aptitude thus far. After all, I am not shutting down all the modern day dialogue channels, just trying to be more social on the parameters other than the social media.