You are not a number…
If you set out to achieve something in business, the chances of actually achieving it are slim. Attempting to dominate the internet is a dream many people have , be that as it may the reality may not be as spellbinding as one might think. In this article http://tinyurl.com/lgejp5w we see that 1 person in every 7 on the planet visited a Google run website last year!
So we have established that Google is doing well, Google can look at the numbers and say “ the numbers never lie”. What exactly they might lie about in this instance is not clear because now that they are dominant…what next. Surely there has to be an end to the pursuit of numbers. When using Twitter, the number of people you can follow is limited to 2000 initially and only goes up if and when you fulfill some undisclosed ratio levels as defined by Twitter. What this means is that you are prevented from being social because you are not being social enough! Go figure, hmmm.
There was a time when some people simply harvested followers on Twitter for no other reason than to have a large following. Times have changed and most people who use Twitter actually try to engage with the people they are linked to. I regularly delete accounts not because I dislike the musings of others but because I am not reading them regularly and therefore am not benefiting from what they say. When you get to a Twitter limit , you are unable to follow back new accounts unless you delete some existing ones… if you do that too much Twitter stops you again. Ironic, is it not?
In a world dominated by this pursuit of numbers we can easily lose sight of the messages and ideas that come our way. Rather like children who often equate high prices with quality, we in turn can often dismiss excellent content because we do not ‘know’ the source. Logic tells us that there must be great stuff out there waiting to be discovered yet we often revert to the safety of the mediocrity we know. In our age of self expression, voyages of discovery we sadly limit ourselves to a very predictable field of play when accessing the boundless concept that is the ‘Internet’. Think not? Look at your browsing history and tell me I’m wrong.
This video guides us through how we can perceive the internet in a more human way ;
The use of the internet is only slightly less sought after than oxygen itself..everything else can wait. When we step back and find a way to connect then it must be the humans at the end of the line that we focus on rather than the method that connected us.
see you on the long and winding road…… Patrick