Facebook is the latest and most curious incarnation of this phenomena surely. The big examples are well chronicled:
* Big brother made ordinary people into celebrities and then (pure genius) turned celebrities into ordinary people
* Blogging allowed the bigger egos among us with the time and energy to produce written content to publish ourselves
* YouTube did the same for the visually imaginative
* MySpace gave us a brilliantly creative platform but remains too teenage in its focus for many
* Twitter did it for those who revel in their own (and other people’s) ADD (attention deficit disorder)
And now Facebook arrives en-masse and allows us to be famous . . . to our friends. Which is odd really. Our friends know us . . . but do they? They know a version of us, but with Facebook we can keep so many more informed of an ‘us’ we can control like the image of the most demanding client. But which photos and applications say the most about me? Who do you have in mind when you add to your profile on Facebook? Who are you talking too? They are not strangers (well, not totally) but they probably come from many of your pasts as well as your personal and professional present. It’s just that recently some colleagues have started sending me messages via Facebook’s email and Wall features rather than by the company email system or text. Robert Scoble is now only taking press release via his Facebook page. All of this is about work. Political parties and NGOs are campaigning on it, but we are also keeping up with very non-work friends and family. It’s a bit like having a party at your house where you invite friends for all your lives through all your ages . . what the hell do you wear? What conversational gambit do you use when talking to your boss and your ex at the same time? Fascinating but puzzling. Here’s Jeff Jarvis on the same subject.
[tags] Facebook, Jeff Jarvis, Robert Scoble, PR [/tags]
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