A few months ago I attended a party, a fairly wild one, where I met some new people. Last week I ran into one of those people again, this time in a professional capacity. She was embarrassed. She was afraid I wouldn't take her seriously. In a small town like Bend, this kind of thing happens all the time, and she commented on how it still takes her (a big-city native) by surprise.
I think that anytime you leave a trail online – on Facebook or on your blog or in another blog's comments, on Twitter, or whatever – it's like attending a party in Bend. Sooner or later everyone's going to know what you said. That means you'd better take care what you say and do; but also, you should give other people a break.
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Your brand is not your reputation. Your brand is your clothing: it's the image you (attempt to) project.
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Blogging used to be primarily online journaling. When you're journaling, you're writing as if to a group of friends. It's confessional. It's intimate. It's vulnerable.
Now, it seems to me, blogging is more business-like. It has a purpose. It's not like a dinner party; it's like a cocktail party. And the cocktail party has a sponsor.
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There's this scene in the movie Wives & Daughters, a recent adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's 19th century novel of the same name, in which a woman who has been unjustly accused by gossip-mongers of philandering has her reputation restored. How does she achieve this magic? She goes for a walk through town with the highest-ranking woman in the vicinity (a countess, I think she is), during which the countess clings to her chummily and praises her every opinion.
This kind of thing can happen online, too, can't it? A woman gets flamed out on one person's blog, and then a blogger of high rank says cool it, and everyone does...
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On Mt. Bachelor's web site there was (is? I can't find it now) a Facebook widget. It showed Mt. B's comment stream and the profile pictures of some of their fans. I found that really disturbing. If I fanned Mt. Bachelor on Facebook, I'd do so to view their conditions updates, not to endorse them. They'd be welcome to include me anonymously in their boast of "over 5000 fans!"; but promoting my profile picture, with my full name, as a fan of theirs crosses a line. When I saw that widget, I unliked all for-profit businesses on Facebook.
On the other hand, if I were a business hoping to catch the attention of certain other companies' customers, I'd fan them immediately.
How is the widget different from Facebook's standard practice of showing fans/friends in the lower left corner of every profile page? It's different because in the widget, fans' profile pictures are more prominent than the company's status updates. It's the fans, it seems to me, who are being advertised.
With that widget, Facebook (at least for me) has also become a sponsored cocktail party.
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Penelope Trunk once said that email is dead. She must have meant only for businesses. Email blasts are as dead as telemarketing, I'll grant you that; but if Twitter and Facebook and blogs are all cocktail parties? then email is the last place to host a dinner party.
2 comments:
I just feel so left out. My blog isn't much more than a journal, edited somewhat. I have no brand. I make no money. I'm tiny after years and years and years. (Turns out PW and I started about the same time. Yeah) But oh well.
I think that you're right that it's become more businesslike. I wonder if the wheel will spin around again as the businessy, self-promotional stuff moves to Facebook or whatever else is next?
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