It’s not difficult to join the myriad social networks and create our digital persona. At first glance, it seems that you just throw up your picture, your resume, your e-mail address, and voila, you’ve digitized yourself!
A closer look reveals that there are new implications for our personas that were not available to in Web 1.0. We need to carefully understand how this era of social media is different before we “go public” and jump into social media.
In the Web 1.0 world we were like sea turtles: our homes, activities and lives were underwater– not revealed to the public. As sea turtles only come out of the ocean to dig holes and lay eggs, we, too, only appeared only sporadically in the Web 1.0 world: our cameos only showed snippets of our public personas.
Appearing online in the Web 1.0 era was almost akin to appearing in the newspaper: it was impressive and it was specific. Furthermore, it was defined through a moderator: your bio on your employer’s website, your soccer game in your hometown newspaper, the picture of your community choral group’s spring concert. Bits and pieces of your already public self were revealed. For the most part, you had no issue with these highlights–they just augmented the public parts of your persona.
Now in the current era of social media, we all have the communication and presentation tools previously only available to the media and corporations. Therefore, at first glance it seems that we, ourselves, define how and where we want to be presented. This shouldn’t be so different from presenting ourselves in person: how we dress, how we style our hair, what car we drive.
But social media has two additional dimensions that are the antithesis of our offline interactions and Web 1.0 presentations. First, social media encourages–in fact, requires–transparency and authenticity. These are dimensions that we have become adept at hiding in our physical, offline lives: we have shades on the windows of our houses, we use concealer on our blemishes, we put security screens on our PC monitors.
In fact, until now, transparency and authenticity have been discouraged in our culture. Presenting an unfinished product was sloppy. We mimicked the tagline “never let ’em see you sweat.” We were expected to appear airbrushed, even before we had access to Photoshop.
Second, social media is, by definition, social. Once you put something out there, it is part of the social media clay and can be molded, changed and sculpted by others. However in the offline world and Web 1.0 era, “collaboration” was a red flag for “cheating.”
Now, there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Social media is changing the way we present ourselves, communicate with others and shape our society. Embracing social media means full disclosure: fully putting yourself out there–experiences, thoughts, reactions, ideas–not just for all to see, but to interact with: improve, change build upon
The good news is that you are as you define yourself: you control your persona. The challenge is that everyone can see you, react to you, collaborate with you. Be sure you understand the attributes and roles of the social media landscape before you digitize yourself.
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