Interesting Snippets
I confess. I'm over 40 and I like facebook. I have a twitter account. I'm linked in. I have my space. I participate and share. I must also confess I sign up for and contribute to these things because I feel I have to. I'm compelled to understand what is going on in these social networks, so that I can be better informed and not miss something in my customer experience work. At least, that's my excuse.
Actually that's nonsense. I'm compelled to do it because I can't help it. I've got so much drivel to share that I have to put it somewhere - and one day I might get on a 'hot drivel' list somewhere. I'm a classic 'me too.0' casualty. I only really exist in these places to been seen by other people that exist in these places. Occasionally 
we'll find a common interest or I'll surprise myself by saying something vaguely professional and someone will ask me about it, but in general, I'm just out there. Which is fine. On my own, I'm pretty inconsequential, but collectively, whether it's blogging, digging, flickring, or some other noun-to-verb activity, there is a collective consciousness and audience/publisher shift like never before.
All of which pontificating brings me onto the interesting snippets. One of the places I participate because I actually want to is flickr. I would say its at creaking point right now, but if you're not obsessed with being interesting, its still one of the best places to interact and share your own stuff with like-minded people. Its success, for me, lies in the fact that its about something specific - photo sharing - rather than a place you can go and do, or share, pretty much anything, without any real focus, other than what you think is interesting yourself, like, um, facebook, twitter, myspace. I was contacted yesterday by a flickr user (which sounds rather like a dependency, which, of course, it is), who is publishing a book. The book is being published via lulu, using an ongoing set of montages made up of photos from other flickr users (we huddle around burning oil cans under bridges), which are used as 'mashups' with quotes and comments on the changing face of online, media and communications. Its not-for-profit and all contributors are covered by creative commons licensing and clearly credited/attributed. The book was just put together because lots of people liked the images and said 'can I get these in a book?'. And now you can.
Isn't that great? I think so - and I'd normally slap this kind of thing with the cynical fish as soon as even acknowledge it. Simple, honest and now, facilitated by social media.
Tunes: The Pigeon Detectives: Take Her Back
Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 flickr Social-media
