Why I Love Social Media
Jan 1, 2010 People, Personal, life
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NYE @ Arab Street Tweetup was amazing, and I think it epitomized everything I love about social media. It had everything – spontaneity, great conversations, new friendships – it was just awesome. And before I go on, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who made last night happen. Jerrick, Ivy, Justin Lee, Justin Ng, Hisham, Michael Cheng, Nicole, DK, Shawn, Jean, and everyone else who stopped by. I had a great time.
Here’s what happened. A few days ago, Jerrick and I were talking on Twitter. He’s back in Singapore for the holidays, and we were saying that we needed to catch up before he left again. Off the top of my head, I threw out the idea of doing something for New Years Eve with the other local social media people. Jerrick then retweeted the idea, and Ivy came across his retweet, and said it was a “great idea”. The three of us then started discussing what we should do, and by the next day, we decided (Ivy’s idea) to go hang out at Arab street for dinner, drinks and the like.
So, we created a twtvite and sent it out. People responded, and two days or so later, at the event, we had about 10 people show up. After dinner and some drinks, we decided to head to Hackerspace Singapore, for more conversations. And let me say, Hackerspace is awesome. They have a great idea, great beliefs and ideals, and I really hope they do well. But more on that another day.
Back to last night. We went to Hackerspace, and just hung out and talked. For something like 8 hours. In between that time, more people joined us, some left at various points in the night. But all in all, a group of us were there until 7 in the morning. We did a countdown, we talked about everything. From what social media meant to us individually, to our thoughts on how Singapore is like at the moment, to random conversations about toilets.
But it was great. Just hanging out, and having a great time with friends, filled with great conversation and discussion. I can’t think of a better way to start the new decade. Before yesterday, I had not met half of the people who were there before. By the end of the night (well, the morning, to be specific), I had made new friends, and I had had a night filled with great conversations, with really smart people.
So yes, that, in a nutshell, is why I love social media, and what I think it should be about. It’s what I’ve missed the most while I was on hiatus. Conversations, community and friendships, with a dash of spontaneity. We get so caught up sometimes worrying about how to monetize our blogs, how to build a reputation, how to further our personal brands, etc (and yes, don’t get me wrong, those things are important, in context), that we forget the social aspect of social media. And I think we need to always remember that.
At the end of the day, social media is about people. At least, that’s what I think.
What do you think? What is social media to you – and what do you like, or not like, about it?
Photo by mhisham
[?]Tags: #nyeonarabst, community, Conversation, friendships, People, relationships, social media, twitter
Thank You
Nov 28, 2008 Personal
I’m not going to write too much today, and I don’t really want to make a list of people to thank, because I’ll probably miss out some of you.
But basically, I just want to say thank you, to all of you out there.
Thank you for giving me your attention and taking time to read what I have to say. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and interacting with me. Thank you for being so inspiring and for making this such an awesome journey.
So yeah. Thank you, for making the world – and my life – better.
Happy thanksgiving.
Wordpress Direct Misses The Point
Nov 26, 2008 blogging
Mashable tells us about Wordpress Direct, which has apparently reached ten thousand users.
What do I think of this? I think it’s really sad – the number of people who don’t get it.
Yes, you can probably make a blog with decent content using a plugin like that (albeit by stealing it from others). And yes, you probably can earn money from it, because it’s optimized and all. And it doesn’t take that much work.
But in my opinion, in doing so, you miss the whole point of blogging. Blogging shouldn’t be about making money. Far from it. It shouldn’t even be about the content per se.
More than anything, in my opinion, blogging is about the community.
It’s about who you’re reaching, who you’re interacting with. It’s about the connections you make, and the people you can influence or inspire. It’s about connecting with like-minded, intelligent people and improving each other.
That’s the value of blogging, in my opinion. It’s about the people, the community.
Why do you blog?
Tags: community, People, Plug-in, relationships, wordpress, Wordpress Direct
What Matters the Most
Nov 24, 2008 Events
Over the past week, I’ve been attending a lot of events, as part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week 2008 Singapore.
Thinking back on the week, though, one thing struck me. The session that I enjoyed the most, and gained the most out of, in my opinion, wasn’t the talks. It wasn’t listening to experts, etc. It was the networking session – just interacting with other people who are passionate about the subject.
At the end of it all, that’s what I think matters the most – the people. Not “experts” or concepts or anything. Yes, those are important. But what’s the most important is the people (to me, at least).
What matters the most to you?
Tags: community, Global Entrepreneurship Week, People, singapore
The Most Important Factor of Your Personal Network
Oct 3, 2008 blogging, personal branding
Dan Schawbel recently wrote about the number of friends vs quality of each friend. It’s an interesting post, that you should check out. His conclusion was this.
“You need both volume and quality. You cannot substitute one for the other. To win the personal eBranding game, you must be hyper-connected, yet maintain relationships with 20% of your network that will provide you with 80% of the value you need (80/20 rule of networking).”
Personally, though, I’m on the fence about this. Yes, I do see where he’s coming from. There’s definitely value in having volume. I don’t think anyone can argue against that.
But there is one factor that I want to bring up, that I think is more important than both the quality of the relationships and the number of friends. I think what is most important is who your friends are, as Seth Godin has touched on before.
In his video podcast, Dan mentioned the example that if you were looking to hire someone, you are more likely to hire someone with 500 connections on LinkedIn than someone with just 5 connections. The number of connections give credibility to your personal brand.
While that is true, to an extent, I would say that who is in your network lends even more credibility. Would you rather hire someone with recognized thought leaders in their network or someone who’s netwrk consists of just their high school classmates?
I believe you’ll gain more – in terms of the credibility it gives to your personal brand, the opportunities that will arise, etc – from having recognized thought leaders in your network. You might have more high school classmates, and you might have a closer relationship with your high school classmates, but I think that the network of your high school classmates might not be as valuable (unless your high school classmates are recognized experts in their field, of course).
As Dan mentioned, “the more connected you are, the better the chance that an opportunity will arise.” But even more so, if you are connected to the right people, there’s an even better chance that an opportunity will arise.
So, yes, you should continue to try and “become more social online and offline in order to maximize those numbers and befriend more individuals in the process”, as Dan suggested. But that should be done one at a time, and with a focus on who you are befriending.
What do you think is the most important part of your personal network? How do you build your network so that it provides the most value for you?
[?]Tags: connections, credibility, friends, network, opportunities, People, personal branding, social network
2 Lessons from The Best Security System in the World
Sep 12, 2008 Random
Christopher S. Penn tells us about the best security system in the world, post 9/11.
Two things from that:
1) You’re often your strongest when you have nothing to lose.
2) It’s about the people, the community. Community trumps policy and tools any time. Take the example of Obama and his grassroots campaign, for example. Community, people. That’s the most important.
[?]Tags: community, grassroots, nothing to lose, obama, People, security
Some Great People to Check Out
Sep 2, 2008 People
Over the past summer, I had the honor of being involved in an internship with Seth Godin and Squidoo. I was one of the virtual interns, part of a Basecamp group which got to try out different stuff. It was interesting and I got to interact with a lot of great people – really creative, intelligent students from around the world. It was a huge pleasure and honor to get to interact with Seth himself as well.
Anyway, as part of the internship, Seth has posted a PDF of handmade bios of some of the interns. Yes, I have a page in there, but that’s not why I’m sharing it. I’m sharing it because there are 15 other really intelligent, creative, awesome people mentioned there, who I highly recommend you check out. You might find someone who you’d want to work with or connect with (given the quality of the people there, you probably will).
So yeah, here’s the PDF.
[?]Tags: internship, People, seth godin, squidoo
