Interest in blogs and the five minute elevator pitch

I was reading a random blog the other day, and before I knew it three hours had passed and I was still intrigued in the artists daily life. I remember when I saw the Common Craft twitter movie. I didn’t believe it at first, that people could be so interested in other people’s daily lives, whether they were drinking a coffee or buying their dinner or going to the toilet. However this person’s daily life is actually really interesting, I guess because of the same reason we ask people in the elevator “how was your day?” We call it just making conversation, but I think that people really do ‘just want to make conversation.’

I was thinking about the so called ‘5 minute’ elevator pitch today, and I don’t think that I’ve ever been in an elevator for five minutes. Even when I went up the highest tower in China, 223 floors up, I was only in the elevator for about one minute. I think that it would actually be a really good employment strategy to test people on their ability to concisely explain a complex concept in only 20 seconds.

Enterprise 2.0 Wk3: The social media

Social networks over the internet are scary things. They allow us to communicate with people instantaneously when otherwise we would have to wait for at least as long as it took for them to pick up the phone. Also, we never get that odd feeling of forgetting their face, when the only reference you might have of a friend from overseas is a picture taken three years ago. Nowadays you only have to log onto any number of social networking sites: Twitter, Facebook and the like to see what new haircut they have gotten for themselves. I have made a lot of friends over the years who live in other countries and I find it hard to keep in contact at the best of times. But recently I’ve been talking to overseas friends using facebook and other social media.

Twitter is funny though, I can understand the idea behind it, thanks to common craft, but it’s amazing just how many people are interested in the simple thoughts of others. It’s essentially a group discussion medium, sort of like group discussions on msn or other similar programs except people can take as long as they need to come up with a suitable reply.

One thing that does scare me about these mediums however is the fact that anyone can see what I write. I remember the lecturer saying that he wouldn’t write anything that he wouldn’t want to see in the paper. I don’t think I’d go quite that far, but I can really understand the sentiment.

Enterprise 2.0, Ex2

To blogging!

To be honest, I am not much of a blogger myself, I think the only thing that has really gotten me into it is the requirements of a couple of subjects I have done previously. However I am definitely in favour of it as an idea and a way for people to communicate their ideas and ideals without deprecating or unsettlingly interested looks that you might get in a more personal forum.

Our exercise this week was to read about blogging and look at a couple of I guess professional blogs (created by people who are an authority on web 2.0 so I guess they are professional) and then blog about what we think of blogging and our ideas of how blogging could be used in today’s society.

Personally I believe that blogging and the social communication that is indicative of web 2.0 is a really good idea and someone that has their finger on the pulse of this method of communication is Sacha Chua. She seems to take a delight in sharing her thoughts and ideas with the world and has actually personalized her blog so that it is accessible and comfortable for strangers to read. One of the most interesting things on her blog are the ideals that she uses to live her life and become successful in her work. She has laid them out for other people to read and peruse and also add to if they have any good ideas. Her blog does a really good job of engaging the reader.