Sebbie on the Webbie

Archive for February, 2009

On Facebook, you can search for people you know through your web based email address book (such as Gmail). You can then send a friend request or invitation to all people or selected people on that address book. If the person is a member, a request is sent to add them to your friends list. If not, the information is stored until that person joins, when a friend request is automatically sent to the person. That is why so many people find you so fast when you join. There is one negative about this though. You don’t necessarily want to have all these people on your friends list.

A simple way to avoid this without going to technical details about privacy settings and the sort is simply use an email address you wouldn’t normally use – create a new one for Facebook only if you want to. Then YOU can go around looking for people YOU want to add and not be ambushed by your bosses ex-wife’s crazy cousin.

Clearly if people will search for you using your name they will find you by default, but it is fairly unlikely your bosses ex-wife’s crazy cousin will be searching for you like that. By the time she finds you, you have learned that it’s okay to decline a friendship invitation and it won’t be such a big deal any more.

If you are serious about your online presence or otherwise just everywhere and want people to recognise you outside your normal circles, avatar is the best way to do this. Online world relies heavily on written word and images. Images, I think we all agree, draw our attention more efficiently than text. This means, that when people are reading your words, they won’t necessarily spend time memorising your name but they will probably at least take a glance at your avatar. In addition, your user name might not be always available for every website you want to join, but your avatar will be. That is why you should have a bit of a think about your avatar. What do you want people to remember you by? There are some types of avatars that tend to give a negative impression of you at first glance:

Baby photo on man’s avatar. Probably the last time any woman told him he was cute.

Baby photo on woman’s avatar. A stay at home mother who has nothing else to talk about apart from her kids. (Probably uses a screen name such as “MomOf2″.)

Just the eye. Seeks a deep contact with people while trying to remain anonymous and appear soulful. Kind of works but is quite unoriginal and thus utterly forgettable.

Popular cartoon character – A male who is trying the “boyish charm” angle although it has never worked for anyone. We’ve seen enough of Vinnie the Pooh and friends already! Original cartoon characters by the man/woman behind the avatar, such as Tony’s are encouraged though!

Disproportioned photo - An avatar of a casual Internet user who hasn’t yet found the delights of Photoshopping. (Has uploaded a photo straight from the camera, without shaping it into a square first.)

Logo – impersonal. Is here to sell me something.

The vast majority of people prefer the picture of a person in an avatar over a logo or other graphic. People want to speak to people. If your avatar is listed amongst several others (like recent visitors list), the likelihood that you’ll get a click is higher if it’s your face in there. But, sometimes you need to put that logo up there. Another thing is, that if you’re using your photo, it gets boring after a while, and intolerable to you when you get a better photo of yourself. But the problem arises, that people get confused if you change your avatar. They won’t remember who you are for a while, until you say something really characteristic to yourself. I believe I found a solution to both of these problems. You are not likely to change your logo too often, right? So why not use that together with your photograph?

Here are some of my recent avatars:

See what I mean? There are elements in the avatar that stay constant while I get bored with the rest of it – me. :p This of course requires some Photoshop skills, but nothing too complicated. What do you think? If you decide to give it a go, please post a comment after uploading your new avatar to SezWho, or to Gravatar if you don’t use SezWho. (SezWho will override Gravatar on my blog.)

I find it funny. In a short time I’ve found several blog posts about some guy or gal who became famous for getting fired or told off at work because of something they said on Twitter or Facebook or some other place. The content is always the same. Screenshots proving this appalling behaviour followed by advice on what not to say publicly or publish online. Good heavens. If I would drag every flame war I’ve ever seen online, or every drinking party photo I’ve seen on Facebook onto my blog I could probably run a blog on just that topic alone. In fact, I think the first Internet term I learned was probably “flame war”. Who cares about them, seriously?

When social media expands, our humanity becomes more and more evident all the time. A lot of us don’t exist in two modes any more; the work persona and the leisure time persona, but these two merge together – and I find it nothing less than fantastic. We are all people, but the old business model has pretty much denied that. If we’re in business, we have to turn into Cylons or something. Ever smiling, ever patient, ever wise…

Hands up: Who can say they’ve never been involved in a flame fight online? I sure have. I always try to maintain my cool, but that is not to say I haven’t said things I probably shouldn’t have, but I’m only a human. If I was a famous or even remotely respected business human, I’d be posted about on numerous blogs with the caption line: “What not to say on Facebook”.

I am expecting that as the younger generations start taking over the businesses, we’ll all become more and more accepting of each others little failures of self control. I think all people, business or not, should be allowed to react to rudeness with a bit of anger and not be expected to maintain the clean exterior 24/7. Most of us get drunk every now and then. Most of us have said something we shouldn’t have, fucked someone we shouldn’t have and made the wrong people aware of those mistakes either by accident or knowingly. Just losen up people. It doesn’t matter.

Did you know that most heart breaking emails that you get are hoaxes? Kids gone missing, presidents thrown out of their legal position, kittens stuck into a jar and the sort, they’re all a load of bull. Even if you can’t possibly imagine why someone would send a hoax like that, check it. It’s very likely that it’s a college boy’s prank. It’s VERY EASY to find out whether or not you should forward the email by copying a section of the email (names are good) and searching it through Google. Chances are that it’s a hoax and listed in one of the hoax-busting websites. If it’s genuine, you’ll probably find news articles about it or blogs or something, I don’t know, because I’ve yet to receive a genuine one.