February 14, 2010 in Education, Socialization
Let me be straight forward, right now. I’m a nobody, I know nothing, and currently my life is headed nowhere. This might sound sad, but what I’ve found even more disturbing is that I’ve been able to pass off my own personal delusions, as reality. What do I mean by that? I’ve managed to get people to praise me, by merely provided evidence of my delusions, sure they might look good on the surface, but behind it the whole structure is being held up by toothpicks.
I’m good at two things, making people believe in me, even when I know they shouldn’t, and continually learning. The first is disturbing, the second is nice and provides a way to make myself more appealing to others. Like I said in my post about social media experts and masters, the only thing you need to be considered an expert, is more knowledge than the person you’re giving you information to, that’s it. I don’t need to know much to know more than you as a regular person to be considered an expert, so long as I can provide even a minute amount of proof. Once I have you, I just have to keep my story straight, and avoid experts who know more than me A contrary action to the education.
In order to learn anything you must break the topic down, and interact with those who are knowledgeable. Since the help of a mentor, or other expert, is beneficial, I love getting in to arguments or seeking out the experts to have conversation. I take their word as solid advice and information and break it down so that I can more easily understand it. This is occasionally easy and more often very complicated, but if you endure and have one skill, which will be mentioned in just a second, it becomes much more simple. Education is all about gaining access to the information you want and need; there are two simple ways to find the data you want, discourse with an expert, or searching for it.
The one skill that you need to make this all work is listening. If you can listen and understand others, it will make you much more likely to learn something from them. I realize, I need to turn the tables and re-analyze what I project, because I’ve had a few people ask me questions about myself, that I don’t feel capable to answer without exaggeration or lying.
If they’re was ever one person, above all others, to listen to, it’s yourself and your’ gut reactions, they let you know what’s right and what’s wrong. I’ve been lying by omission about what I know for too long, and now it’s time for me to listen to myself, and even more importantly everyone I interact with, because I haven’t for too long. If I get schooled, I will admit defeat and ask for assistance. I’m tired of creating tension, so I’m going to begin bowing out gracefully, rather than turning my face and walking away, like a coward. I need to listen, and I hope you understand this and will allow me to be someone who you can trust.
P.S. If I interact with you on any service, I invite you to step up and slap me if I ever seem out of line. We all need it, at some point.
January 10, 2010 in Politics, Socialization
I’m sick of all these damn “Social Media Experts”, but at least they have their name right. They are “experts” and I’m fine with that even if there are thousands of them. Maybe they should be a little bit more humble about their position, and we wouldn’t dislike the terminology as much.
You don’t have to know everything about a category to be an expert. You just need to be more experienced and knowledgeable than the person who is looking for an expert. If they don’t really know what they are looking for, besides maybe a few buzzwords. You can be an expert to those people, because they know considerably less than you.
To be an expert though, you have to know who you’re talking too, and if they actually know more than yourself. Never call yourself an expert in front of someone who knows more than yourself, unless you’re an amazing bluffer. Of course, even a bluffer will be found out a fool if he continues to talk about the topic, and the person discovers this. The best thing to do, is not self-label yourself an expert, unless you’re truly or near being a master.
A master knows the ins and outs of the system in which he works. The master’s knowledge of the system allows him to do things that regular people and even the majority of experts wouldn’t be able to understand it. The master is efficient with his work, he has the answers or knows exactly where they can be found rapidly. The master is at the top of his art along with very few.
If you seek a master for help, quality is guaranteed, but an actual response is not. A master will teach you everything, but he will always hold one kernel of knowledge back. The master is not fooled by experts, even if he trained them; he knows that they might try to take his claim. The master uses his withheld knowledge as a way to maintain the upper hand.
The truth is I’m just sick of “Social Media Experts”, self-labeling themselves, but I’m also sick of people bitching about it. The reason the people are bitching however, is because they are just as or more capable of discussing social media, than the people that are self-labeled. Some of these people, may even be very close to being a Social Media Master, but they choose to be named by their peers and not by themselves. Of course, the “Social Media Experts” are experts, we just aren’t their audience, so stop bitching.
November 14, 2009 in Socialization, Technology
I noticed this a while back, while watching FFundercats, as they discussed the possible loss of the service, with founder Paul Buchheit. They also discussed why Friendfeed captured the audience it did and why most of the users hate/dislike Facebook. It’s the content and community that exists on each, and what value you receive from them. I ended up breaking the real-life social experience into 3 fields, to try and explain this.
Introduction
Commonality
A shared interest in similar items, friends, or favorite places to hang out or eat. It should be easily distinguishable to find a similarity to begin with as your mutual friend introduces you or you end up at the same location at the same time. You may both go to a place to enjoy a hobby you both share, and make a connection from that.
Mutual Experience
You have both being through an incident or event in which you share similar experiences, this could fall under commonality, but it is something that isn’t common enough that you would normally share with a stranger. It could be your profession, a disease that has affected your life, or going to an exclusive event. It is a personal connection that randomly comes out and creates an initial connection.
Notable Interaction
This is the kind that is often used in movies, but occurs quite often in life also, the cliche in films is when someone drops there books and gets assistance from someone. It’s just an accident that creates an opening for introductions. In real life this could be any unplanned event where people share some information about each other, whether it be a car accident, being stuck in an airport due to a delay, or any accident that causes people to offer assistance.
Acquaintance
Re-occurrence
The event that any of the aspects of the Introductory Field reoccurs often enough that you begin to know each other on a more personal level, than you would on a one-off meeting.
Mutual Shared Personal Knowledge
The information that most people don’t want you to have if they don’t know you very well, their birthday, their relationship status, where they’re from. It’s the most basic of info that provides accessibility to each other and also a little detail about one’s current state of affairs.
Caring
The use of Personal Knowledge to express yourself to the person. You can wish them a happy birthday, with out it being to awkward, or provide condolences when they lose something/someone very dear to them. It is the ability to express without being perceived as fake that you are willing to be there for the person in the moments they need support.
Friendship
Deep Interaction
The point in which you can discuss things that matter to you, that you might not share with people you don’t know very well. Discussions which involve personal knowledge to be gathered that isn’t public information. It is the ability to trust the other person with more personal information.
Experience
The effect of Deep Interaction is that you are begin to know more about the person. You have inside jokes, can pass on interests, and know how to change their mood for the positive or negative. The insight that comes with being a friend allows you to interact more fluidly with the other person.
Ease of Access
The ability to start a conversation with a person relatively simply, you make time for each other to have a discussion. It can also be, likely is, the provision of multiple channels to reach the person for such discussions. Having such ubiquity helps further and accelerate, the relationship.
Catalysts
Real-Time Discussion
By now we should all understand what this means, but I will clear the meaning up for those that don’t know. Real-time discussions are fluid interactions that happen rapidly enough, within a short period of time, that they can be seen as a seamless conversation.
Randomness
The spark that can ignite a friendship. It is the driving force of introductions and fosters connections. You see someone grasping something that you like as well, you have an accident, you trip. It is the key to mutual experiences, and notable interactions. It also keeps everything interesting, you may come across something new, at any time.
Currently, I haven’t found an online service that offers all of these qualities, but the top few have hit some sweet spots that make it much easier to manage socialization on all levels. Below I posted a chart of what factors Friendfeed, Facebook, and Twitter have become useful for. And I’m not saying that they don’t have ways to do all of this, it’s just not simple, if it’s not simple to manage the social factors, it’s useless.
October 19, 2009 in Socialization, Technology
We’re constantly seeing comparisons made between Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter, and various other networks, sometimes these comparisons are valid. The reasons to use these different services collectively, is because the environments are different. These environmental factors describe the type of interaction people use and receive from the service.
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April 23, 2009 in Business, Philosophy, Pragmatism, Socialization
No one is too small to make a difference, they just might be too small to do it by themselves. If you can get a few big dogs in to help you out that’s great, but the problem with them is that they can’t be everywhere and help you all the time, look for someone smaller. Turn to the rats to help you out, they are plentiful and will be eager to help you for next to nothing as long as you provide something that makes them happy.
That was the realization I had watching Wanted, when Wesley releases the rats into the mill. He provides them with peanut butter, albeit laced with gasoline, in order to have them help in his mission. Several dozen dogs couldn’t have presented him with the return that he received for the hundreds of rats that went out to return his favor. So maybe you should follow his lead and seek the little guys that want you to help them out, not the big guys that you want help from. How do you think they got big, they helped the little guy out, and he let his friends know about it.
Look at how the successful social-networks grew. They all start with a small focused market, Myspace with Musicians, Facebook with College Students, Twitter with texting and the Early Adopter. Each of these small markets had one huge thing in common, they were set in a location where they could expand to the general population, Myspace to fans, Facebook to older Alum and the general public, Twitter to marketers and people looking for an audience. Then they expanded to the mainstream audiences through word of mouth and the necessity for people to have friends on the network to interact with.
They did 3 things and they did them well.
- They decided on a market.
- They expanded their market into a natural evolution of the original Market.
- The focused on the large groups, of small people, to help spread the message, not small groups, of big guys.
Far too many people have the wrong perspective. They seek to become a giant by standing on the shoulders of other giants, rather than building a self sufficient community that helps each other rise up to the sky. I’m going to show you a perspective variation of the King’s Chessboard, a parable in which a king offers a peasant a payment for his services, the peasant simply asks that the king give him double the amount of rice that he gave the day before, until he has covered each square on a chessboard, starting with one grain of rice. The king soon realizes that he can’t honor this payment as it’s too much for the kingdoms granary.
In my variation, I’ll have the king offering 2 different rewards to the peasant, he can receive 1 billion grains of rice each day until each square has been covered, or he can take the option from the original story of 1 grain of rice and have it doubled everyday for each square. Most people would be blinded by the large sum that they are told they will receive each day and wouldn’t quantify the fact they will actually lose a large sum by taking the larger initial choice. In fact, you will receive only ~.0000007% of the total had they chosen the doubling.
So remember, sometimes it’s better to go with the small people and to take time for the little things in life. They will pay off much more in the long term than always trying to do something that involves the major points in of focus. Take your time and if someone needs help don’t be greedy go and help them you never know the power to change your life they might have.
