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ATTENTION | Noah Brier

Controlled Exposure over False Privacy

For me the pros of exposure outweigh the cons.

September 27, 2006 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 7 COMMENTS

So privacy's dead. What now?

Control. It's time for us to take it back.

Everyone is spying on us, so why shouldn't we start spying on ourselves? At least that way we can use that data to our own ends.

last.fm gives you recommendations based on your musical tastes. Google is recording your searches with the eventual goal of giving you your own search engine. By making your bookmarks public, del.icio.us makes them a lot more powerful. These are all attention based systems that give us value through exposure.

But you want to know the most powerful attention system out there?

Let me give you a hint: You're looking at it. Nothing paints a better picture of my identity and the things I pay attention to than my blog.

While there are dangers in exposing myself to the world, I've made the decision that the benefits are even bigger:

  1. I control my identity. Search for Noah Brier on Google and I'm number one. That means when someone's looking for me they find the me that I want them to see. That's big.
  2. I connect with likeminds. I wouldn't have met all the great people I've met in the last 6 months had it not been for my willingness to expose myself and my thoughts to the world. The possibilities of these relationships are endless.
  3. I create searchable thoughts. I know for a fact that I use the search box on this site more than the rest of you combined. Since I wrote everything, I'm able to go back and dig up something I was thinking about 6 months ago. Sure, Google's search might be powerful for the masses, but it can't shake a stick at my own search for me.

Bottom line is this: Instead of false privacy I've chosen controlled exposure. And you know what? I'm having a damn good time with it.

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COMMENTS

1michael benton

I would like to extend an invitation to you to join in on a collective blogging section of our upcoming winter issue of Reconstruction

Here is the original call:

Theories/Practices of Blogging

Our intent in this section of the issue will be to collect a wide range of bloggers and link up to their statements in regards to why they blog (something many of us are asked) and any statement they have on the theories/practices of blogging.

If you already have a post on this you can feel free to use it, or, if you are interested, you can submit a new one.

We will link to each statement from the issue at our site, with the intent of creating a hyperlinked list of statements on blogging that can serve as an introduction to blogging (or an expansion of knowledge for those already blogging).

If you are interested please contact me at mdbento @ gmail.com

September 28, 2006

2Michael Surtees

don't forget about flickr where you can control the images that people see of you...

September 28, 2006

3Piers Fawkes

ok, this is something I just put over on ChartBeta - there's an illusion that we are in control of what other people think. We are in control of what we think and what we do, but in the end, we present ourselves to inform the opinions of others, and brands - but we can't actually control what they finally think about or even act towards us.

September 28, 2006

4Piers Fawkes

and therefore ( I don;t know if Michael's comment was tongue in cheek but...) we can't really control what Flickr shows us as some other fkr is going to put a pic up of us and then some other guy is going to leave a comment saying that I'm a prick.

September 28, 2006

5Noah Brier

I'm with you Piers, we can't control what they think. The best we can do is present ourselves as close to how we'd like them to think as possible and hope that's how they go. I guess the bottom line for me is that I'd much rather be the one starting the conversation than someone else. To bring it back to brands, I think far to many take a back seat in their communication. They are not proactively reaching out to fans or detractors.

Sure, brands set their identity, but we've learned to distrust them since so few of them speak from the heart. Over the years messaging has reached a point of complete dilution.

The way I approach my brand is different than the way a major corporation does. There's not a lot of bureaucracy. As I read on someone's site recently, "I'm my brain's publisher." I don't need to clear anything with legal or any of that stuff.

What you get from blogs authenticity, something brands these days are sorely missing.

September 29, 2006

6Noah Mittman

That's one of the reasons I used the feed aggregator of Drupal on my site as a linkblog-of-me -- it's to establish my homepage as the "first foot forward" to provide context and hierarchy to all this activity that can be explored in isolation.

September 29, 2006

7Michael Surtees

Back to Piers and Noah's points - control may have been too strong of a word. Guide would have been a better word. In the book Brand Gap, there's a quote that suggests “a brand isn't what you think it is, it's what you're client says it is� or at least something like that. My original intention was that you can definitely tell a story of who you want others to perceive you, and photos do a really good job of that. But of course photos do lie...

September 29, 2006