A few days ago, I was chatting with a friend on Instant Messenger using the Yoono Friend’s Widget. We were discussing our lives and what’s new and I began talking about how I’m doing personally. I discussed my new apartment and how my new bike is working out for me. We spoke for about an hour and she said something that made me see things differently. Sarah said, “I thought things were totally different. I never could have guessed by following your blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr albums that this was going on in your life.”
.
Transparency is defined as, “able to be seen through; clear” and maybe that’s not exactly what I was looking for but my point about transparency is that everything is there with nothing hidden. I’ve been preaching to people about being transparent on social networks but I’m not doing that myself. In fact, I don’t know anyone out there who is completely transparent. What I mean is, tweeting that you’re in X amount of debt or that you just went to the doctor for a specific illness or that you lied about being sick today so you wouldn’t have to go to work and going as far to say that you’re about to divorce your wife because you can’t stand her anymore. Those sort of things aren’t put on social networks for many reasons but why do proclaim transparency is the key to success in the social space?
.
I’d like to propose a new way to look at interaction on social networks and call it something else. From now on, when I am helping someone build a successful social media empire, I’ll preach about being honest. Honesty is a character trait we should all share and honesty online is a winner as well. When I don’t like something, I’m honest about it and if I can’t be honest about something, I won’t talk about it online. I can’t honestly tell you how much I make each year and how much I spend on certain things so, therefore, it won’t be brought up. Over time I may give up certain information about myself but no one should ever be completely transparent on the web because every bit of information you publish is archived forever on a server somewhere and all of it can be used against you (good or bad).
.
When you begin contemplating how to dive head first into social networking, consider your personality, interests and ambitions, choose what you want people to see and be honest about yourself. If there’s something about you that people may not like, it’s your choice to give up that info about yourself and once you do, it’s on the web forever. Let’s remove “transparency” from our social media vocabulary and start being “honest.”
Related posts:
- Community Building through Social Media Here at Yoono, we take pride in putting the user...
- “…Yoono’s Excellence in Social Media Practices” Sean Ferguson, who is a user of Yoono has just...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Recent Comments