Remember when Myspace was huge? The number of friends you had seemed to reflect to people how popular you were. People spent hours trying to get their profile page to look spiffy and sparkly, choosing songs for your playlist was one of your top priorities.
With the rise of Facebook, social media and networking world have changed their face and quickly found their way into our everyday life. Myspace died out, Facebook started taking over. People, for a time, were more selective about who they added as friends. Some cracked down on permissions so that they could control who was able to see content on their page and who was blocked from certain areas. As the popularity of Facebook grew, the face of the internet and how people were connecting started changing as well. Facebook was no longer for college students; this phenomenon was spreading like wildfire and making its way into the business world for networking and so much more.
Then came Twitter. At first, Twitter was a hard sell. A friend of mine tweeted a few months ago something that made me giggle, but also really got me thinking. They said, "What's harder: Trying to convince a kid that Twitter is a complete waste of time? Or trying to convince an older person that Twitter isn't a complete waste of time?"
Twitter, for me started out as a fun way to have silly interactions with friends, let friends know of events that were happening at the moment and to keep up on some people that I don't otherwise get to keep up with. As I started to really pay attention to the possibilities of Twitter, I saw the growth happening and the networking world that was available to me.
As a young designer, just starting to build my business and just starting to build my brand, networking is my bread and butter. A couple of years ago, when I first started in the design program here at Portland State University, an opportunity to create a logo for a local start-up fell into my lap. I felt like I had just stumbled upon a pot of gold. Over the last two years, I have created a relationship with the women of Seniors Homing Together (my first logo gig) who also run APN, a service that helps the elderly and their families find appropriate facilities and care for their loved ones. Right now I am in the process of helping them re-brand APN, and it has been a pretty amazing experience.
But I digress. Networking, yeah, that's what we were talking about. So I read an article yesterday about Klout, its +K feature and how it mirrors the idea of the once popular #followfriday. I just started on Klout 4 days ago, but it has been an amazing tool to be able to watch how I interact with social media, the effect I have on my followers, the effect they have on me, and to be able to adjust my social-networking-skills to be more successful. Needless to say, I have learned a lot in the last 4 days.
So how, you are probably asking by now, does Klout and +K relate to the almost antiquated #followfriday? Well, I will tell you. Yesterday, I read an article by Troy Janisch on SocialMeteor.com about this very concept. When Twitter first started gaining popularity, a common meme was #followFriday. This was a way for people to recommend Tweeps to follow. As people became follower-hungry, it starting getting to a point that was careening toward on spam-tweets. The once helpful hashtag became more about trying to hoard new followers than really being able to discover interesting people you might not have been exposed to otherwise.
With Klout, the new +K awards are a way to do something very similar. The last couple of days I've seen some of the people I follow tweeting about "I just gave @thatonefriend +K about a topic that they know a lot about and talked about." You can let your friend know that you appreciate them for influencing you, and you can let others know that they are a reputable source in that area.
So last night, as I rode the 35 toward North Portland, I was flipping through my RSS on my phone (goodness, technology is amazing). I came across this article and started to think about the way this resonates with me. I thought about how this effects me, my business, people I know, people I want to know, and how we all see one another as a commodity. Capitalism at its best, yes, but also the way we, as a culture and society, operate and think. In a way, we're all in this huge popularity contest. The internet, being our stage, has also made this world a very small one. What was once '6 degrees of Kevin Bacon', is now 3 degrees of Facebook.
How do I fit into this popularity contest? I mean, the rules have changed since middle school, but its essentially the same thing right? So I am faced with the challenge of trying to set myself apart from every other designer out there. I think this will always be the case, I will constantly have to redefine my mission, reestablish myself in this market, and reconnect with people. How do you set yourself apart and how often do you think about this question? I'm guessing you're like me, and you probably don't ask yourself that enough. So I say, how 'bout we start now!
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