Social media is not the message

Getting a context of social media

It is beyond dispute that social media had a great role to play in the revolutions that have swept Tunisian and Egypt within the last few weeks.

However, it would be disingenuous for anyone to suggest that posting a tweet, a blog or starting a group on Facebook is the catalyst for change and the impetus for the gathering of people to a cause.

A microphone is not a message

Analogically, social media is just like another medium; a microphone; putting a microphone in a hands of mute will achieve no purpose, just as putting it to the mouth of a rambler would achieve just as much to be noticed to prepare the listeners to ignore the person.

A microphone to a speaker is only of value if the speaker has a message at first, then a message that resonates, a message that inspires, a message that encourages and a message that galvanises to a cause and purpose.

It takes a message to benefit from social media

In the same vein, that is the lesson we should learn of what social media means to rallying people to a cause; social media in and of itself does nothing of the sort that is attributed to it – it codifies, amplifies and relays what has been given to it.

In other words, it requires people who have their ideas sorted out and their message clearly stated and most of all, it must be a message whose time has come – that way, it will ride the moment to create the situation we hope for and maybe result in the unexpected.

Social media cannot bestow you with talent

So, if you are naturally not a communicator do not be deluded into thinking social media will suddenly make you one just as holding a microphone does not make you a talented singer just because your croaky voice can be amplified to the hearing of others who might heckle you off stage rotten eggs and tomatoes.

With that analogy, I hope we can put social media in context and perspective – it is about the message, the medium is just a facilitator, it cannot become the message, that would be utterly absurd.

Thought Picnic: I am available, let's talk

What I have to give

Each time I have the opportunity to return to the market at the end of a project I wonder about what it is I can give to those that could use my skills.

My skills acquired over 22 or so years of working in IT, maybe skills of a lifetime too because a good deal of how I project myself comes from everything that makes the person that I am.

Behind the façade of assuredness about ones abilities lays a niggling concern about relevance, you read the job offers and measure yourself against the requirement wondering if you do match them or you are extending yourself beyond your capabilities.

I am able

Now, I believe I have always risen to the challenges in terms of projects or problems put my way for solutions or innovative ideas.

The whole workshop of my expertise is brought to bear in crafting the concept, the process, the workflow, the solution and the implementation giving due consideration to maintaining operational effectiveness whilst improving the environment.

However, I have somehow been unable to put that level of passion into my marketing literature, my curriculum vitae shows so much but probably does not reveal enough about my usefulness.

Looking further afield

In some cases, I tap my resource of professional contacts built over the years who have been my source of jobs in the last 15 years, but in tougher times, the net has to widen to include new contacts and people who hardly know what I can do and probably may never appreciate that who they are getting is a lot more than what they are seeing.

Sometimes I feel I am a man of many abilities without a coherent channel of expression, it becomes a bother gnawing at my confidence and contributing to my sense of uncertainty.

Yet, I believe, things would turn out right, I just have to keep letting people know I can bring something valuable to the table and it would be of use, worthwhile and of good quality helping their organisation be better at what they do.

Maybe it is also time to begin something anew, my ideas of what makes for the conversion of crazy ideas into viable solutions – that is a process towards avoiding irrelevance.

In any case, I am ready for a new job, can we talk?

Reference

LinkedIn Profile

Facebook: Close your freak show to the voyeurs

What Facebook is up to

If you do not understand Facebook by now, it has placed a bet and you had better get ready to fold, bluff or show your hand, the way you play the game is not dependent on Facebook but you.

The news now is that Facebook is now revealing personal details [1] like your phone number and home address to developers.

That means if you have not tightened the security on your Facebook profile, that information can be extracted by applications and tools that are seeking that kind of information about you.

It is like being clothed and having a body scanner seeing through your clothes to see what you have concealed on your person inviting the curiosity of security to give you a hand job – sorry, the polite term is a pat down.

However, if you are concealing nothing on your person, there is no need for a pat down, you pass through the system, offer the viewer the barest titillation and you are on your way.

Why?

In other words, regardless of how computer savvy you think you are, why are such details on your Facebook profile?

Why does your home address have to be on Facebook? Friends who know you probably have your address, if they don’t they can ask and you have through one single transaction of a telephone call, a text message or an email send your address to them.

There is just no particular reason for your address to be in your Facebook profile, even you were suffering from amnesia and needed an aide memoir for your home address, Facebook does not by the most incredulous stretch of the imagination qualify to be the repository of that standard of personal information.

The question still is why?

The same goes for your phone number; I had a private message exchange with a friend the other day when I wanted to share my phone number. It was just between me and him, I could after sending that message and he calling me delete the message

It was a private information (message) that is stored on Facebook servers, probably retrievable by Facebook but should by no means to shared by Facebook with anyone else.

Following the standard set by Twitter, if authorities make a sealed request for that information, they should seek to reveal that request to me allowing for me to challenge that request in the courts if I feel that disposed.

Just because your life, your views and your pictures are on Facebook does not mean your home address or phone numbers should be on Facebook. I would hope if you published the pictures of your car, you will blank out the license plate number too.

An empty safe eliminates the threat

Just as an empty safe opened to that view of a robber satisfies the robber of its emptiness, if you do not fill that information in on your Facebook profile; by that, I mean your home address, your phone number or any other distinguishing information as your birthdate, your hometown, your current location and so on, developers cannot suddenly have that information to play with and reveal to others.

The circumlocutory argument I am making here is you are primarily responsible first for what you put on Facebook, if you do not put it on Facebook, Facebook cannot use it or abuse it as it shifts the goal posts of security seeking to create business opportunity for itself at your expense and folly.

If it’s about, it gets out

So, you can go into your profile now and start to remove the unnecessary personal information you are sharing like an exhibitionist offering a freak show to leering voyeurs who are ogling with glee free of charge and having a laugh, pimping you off to others of that ilk whilst you think you are all safe in your version of the proverbial emperor’s new clothes.

If in doubt, leave it out, if it’s about it does get out, the choice is yours – is your Facebook an open book for everyone to poke fun at? You are the master of your Facebook destiny, how you lay it out is how you will be seen.

Like I have said before, put on some clothes, close some windows, slam some doors shut and draw some curtains, you do deserve some privacy for your moments of intimacy, don’t you?

Sources

[1] Huffington Post | Facebook Starts Sharing Your Home Address, Phone Number With Developers