Skip to main content

The Naked Generation: Growing up Social


How much have social networks changed our notion of privacy? What are the implications of broadcasting our lives online? It is good or bad

I think it’s undeniable that privacy as we know it has changed. We can easily check our friends online to figure out where they are, who are they dating, what they ate yesterday….  For the “older” generation like myself who didn’t grow up in this environment, this is a change. Honestly, I am still a bit concerned about exposing myself online, though my feeling about it is changing by the day.

The story, however, is different for the generation growing up on Facebook. They are not afraid to share their lives online. They want to send a signal to the world that they are alive. They are staging their own “reality” TV show that just happens to be online. This is why I call them the naked generation. They are living in a transparent age where the lines between public and private are blurring. I don’t know if social networks are the cause, but they are likely to continue to accelerate this trend.

Now, is being digitally “naked” is good or bad? While I understand the concerns around broadcasting our lives, I actually think that it is good.  I think transparency make us more human. We are more likely to care about others. Transparency also comes with a sense of social responsibility. To be part of the network, we need to respect the trusted environment. We don’t want to do something to others that we don’t want to be done to us. And, we are more likely to self-police the network to make sure that no one violates this trust.

We can also look it from an economic perspective. Transparency eliminates the problem of asymmetric or hidden information. Relationships carry a value in our society. They help us get jobs, exchange ideas, get dates… Transparency allows for differentiation of good connections from bad ones. As a result, we are more open to forming new connections with “strangers” who have a robust public profile. These days, we even have apps that facilitate profiling of potential dates.

In summary, today’s web continues to have a democratizing influence on our society. Initially, the web played a role in democratizing information. Today is about democratizing relationships. In other words, individuals are more likely to have access to people who previously would have been outside of their social spheres.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Cool Brands Stay Hot: Aim for Love, Not Likes

Love is an unconditional emotion while like is a more watered-down version of love. Loving someone means that he or she means everything to you while liking someone implies that you are only happy being with that person. Love involves deeper, stronger emotions, while like is more of a tender feeling towards that special someone. In a world of infinite choices, love is everything. Like is a nice to have.  Today, we live in a world of abundance, where people intent to create content surpass their time to consume it. Video content is much easier and cheaper to produce than at any other time in history. YouTube sees 400 hours of video uploaded every minute. Facebook has more than 250,000 status updates in the same span. We could never read and see everything online.  With unlimited possibilities and limited time, we pay sustainable attention to what we love and divided attention to what we like. We spend hours watching Homeland and give our divided attention to our news feed on Facebook. …
Post a Comment
Read more

Persuasive Simplicity, Persuasive Commerce

In a complex world, simplicity wins. In a human world, purpose sets us apart. In a complex and human world, we need persuasive simplicity to survive. Persuasive simplicity is putting simplicity in the path of motivation. It is simplicity with purpose. The Perfect Machine Today we are entrenched in a performance-marketing race. We want to make commerce as efficient as possible. We want to build the perfect commerce machine—one that knows what we like, hate, love, and need. A precise machine that doesn't spoil us with too many choices.  A nimble machine that delivers goods in hours, not days or weeks. A frictionless machine where we can order in one click, one button, one voice order, anytime, anywhere. A cost-effective machine that guarantees the best price. This machine sounds a lot like Amazon.com, jet.com, hotel.com, Trulia.com and kayak.com. The Human World
1 comment
Read more

Winter and Summer in Adland

It is winter in Adland.  We have moved from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance and algorithms.  We have lost the power of influence. Trust has been severely damaged.  Consumer attention is the new bottleneck. We no longer decide who sees us. Instead, we get picked.  30 second is not enough anymore. We need to take consumers through a scenic journey to create a long lasting relationship.  Everyone is a publisher. It is easier than ever to create, but harder than ever to make a hit.  The impulse to make has far outrun the desire to consume.  New forces have emerged in the form of sophisticated algorithms.  A new model has surfaced called "pay per play,” which scored everything we do on relevance to feeding the machine. It decides what gets picked, when, and where, based on extreme relevancy.  Mass media has vanished. Precision and personalization have emerged.  It is winter in Adland. The good days are all long gone.  It is Summer in Adland We now have the power to make bra…
Post a Comment
Read more