The only thing second to strong Colombian coffee to wake you up in a hurry is getting a message first thing in the morning that “You have been poked“. Now that you have been poked you need to respond by either poking back or telling anyone who cares or doesn’t, “What’s on your mind“. This can greatly vary from “What a beautiful day” to “I ate an entire snicker bar today” or whatever is on your mind. You then click on Notifications to see what strangers are commenting on other strangers “What’s on your mind” comments or getting poked again. You then go look at personal pictures that your friends may have posted .. new dog, new kids, new bffs, or extreme closeups that would make their dentist proud. You may be tagged in a picture or you can tag yourself if you like. Then you take another sip of your coffee and proceed to ”Add a new friend“. If you have time you can “Take a Quiz“ and post the results for anyone who cares or doesn’t or “Become a Fan” or just ”Invite Friends“.
If you are smiling you are an FB addict. Admit it. You don’t quite get it, you don’t understand where all this is going, or what social networking really means but you still like it. You are on Facebook either because everyone else is, or to keep a tab on your kids, or because you have nothing else to do, or because you are a genuine social butterfly – whatever the case … you are addicted to it.
So where IS this whole thing going? The untouchable boundary between your personal and professional life has been permenantly breached. Your thoughts aren’t yours anymore. Your friends are making new friends with people they don’t know but trust others do. You have no control over who is looking at your picture or even posting your picture. You find out more about your family than you ever knew. Updates are instantaneous. Events are globally celebrated. Your level of awareness is unprecedented. Alvin Tofler in his book “Future Shock” talks about the fact that Knowledge is Power – and the person with access to the most amount of knowledge wins. Which meant that the kid in New York in the 80s who could walk across the street to a local library had more access to knowledge and thus power than a kid in Africa. Social networking collapses that gap. Which means it could be a catalyst to start tilting the base of power around the world. More access to information, more access to knowledge, and thus more access to wealth can now be instantaneous from any corner of the world. So is Facebook much more than a place for teenagers to hang. Is it the start of a new global movement so powerful that it makes previous innovations like faxes, telegrams, emails look diminutive? And if so are we leveraging it correctly for maximum benefit?
I need to go. Someone just poked me and I feel the urge to poke back.
