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May 06, 2008
The Digital “Me” - Welcome to Life 3.0
During the past couple of weeks, I have had a number of meetings with people who I met for the first time but who told me in effect that they felt like they knew me because they “read me” online. I wasn’t sure if this meant that they read my blog, visited my home page, watched past episodes of my show on pulverTV, if they found me on Facebook, watched some of my Qik Videos, saw my Flickr photos, if they were following me on twitter, found me on LinkedIn or one of a number of other networking platforms that I have tried out over the years. And when I asked that question, it turned out to be a number of things, but never all of these things and never in the order that I would suggest someone follow if they were trying to get to know me.
And this lead me to thinking about how easy (and hard) it is for people to really get to know us these days. One of the challenges is that from time to time I get busy with things (like hosting breakfasts) and I don’t always invest the time to update my profiles and make an effort to make sure that the information that is available is always the most current. And no one knows how much weight I would put into one platform or another when defining the digital “me”, especially since the weighting would change, depending upon the context of the reason why someone was trying to get to know me.
So just in case there is someone who is trying to better understand The Digital “Me”, this is the way I would approach this:
For a quick background - please read the “About me” section on my Facebook profile, (based on ”The Quick Jeff Pulver Biography”) and spend 3 minutes visiting my home page. Facebook friends have the advantage of being able to get my status updates which by far provides more accurate context for things that are going on in my life than just about anything else. While not all of my status updates carry the same weight, they are a reflection of where I am, what I may be doing and who I may be with and sometimes what I am thinking about.
I would then recommend visiting my blog but this isn’t always a great reflection of what I am up do since at any moment in time there are a variety of things which I may have recently blogged about and it is possible that none of my recent posts provides the context and content that would help someone really get to know me.
Each year there are a number of blog posts that if I made sticky would do a much better job in defining me than the random blog posts that one will find. This is a list of a few sticky blog posts from July 2007 that is a better reflection than a random sampling of blog posts. (Note to self - post some more “Sticky” blog posts.)
Once reading my profile and some blog posts, I would then visit the video archives of The “Jeff Pulver Show” and take a look at: (1, 2 and any random recent show and some my early shows.) Watch one or more of my Qik videos, check out some of my videos posted to YouTube and collectively you will get to know a side of me. Then find me on twitter and you might have a better understanding of the context of some my updates. (There usually is a correlation between my Facebook status messages and related twitter updates.)
Of course this doesn’t highlight anything I might have commented on in other people’s blogs or other conversations that I may be an active part of. So in that case, after doing your “research”, if you had any specific questions, I would recommend just sending me a Facebook message or sending me an email.
So it turns out that getting to know the Digital “me” requires what seems to be quite an effort and is not a real efficient way of getting to someone, especially due to the randomness of the content and the original context of why someone is making an effort to get to some someone.
But this is how I would generically define myself, at least for a moment, at least for today. And collectively this is an area which I am now exploring that I am starting to call “Life 3.0.” As the semantic web continues to evolve, the meta data associated with the ways we defines ourselves will become increasingly valuable.
And I have to ask myself, how do YOU define the Digital YOU? Is there one place on the Internet that properly contains all of the elements that are a proper reflection of who you are and how you want to be understood by others? Just wondering...
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Tags: Social Media, The Digital Me, Semantic Web, Life 3.0, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on May 6, 2008 09:08 AM | Permalink
Additional resources: Internet TV Online Guide @ Network2.tv | Voice on the Net Conference | Video on the Net Conference
Comments
I think that between this and looking for the next big VoIP app, you're hitting on the trend of future. I can go into more detail on this (www.golifemobile.com/blog) but in a nutshell I think that the real need is for the 'Digital Me' to be an ACCURATE representation of 'Me' so it can effectively represent me in the digital world. The challenge is, how do we make the Digital Me as dynamic, adaptable, and intuitive as the Physical Me?
Posted by: Irene at May 14, 2008 06:41 PM
Glad someone's wrenching and thinking and positing the Digital Me.
I'm just glad to be getting to know you Jeff and 700 or so others I listen to, read, comment with and generally enjoy exchanging My Digital Life with.
Proud of the company I keep.
Posted by: Gerald Buckley at May 7, 2008 10:41 PM
I liked the Life 3.0 though initially confused 3.0 when I saw the headline in my news reader. The sticky blog post, is I think the best way to introduce your readers to what you consider the best and feel passionate about.
Kamal
Posted by: Mobkarma at May 7, 2008 10:46 AM
Jeff, you do a good job of giving the bigger picture here. I blog, I Twitter, I FaceBook, and....I Flickr.
Posted by: Alan Weinkrantz at May 6, 2008 11:15 PM
Being new to most of this, I haven't thought of it in terms of people getting to know me versus people knowing I exist, recognizing my humanity, my right to be in the space and my right to have a voice in the coversation. I'm more concerned with the line that divides my personal & private life from my professional/public life. How do you balance those?
Posted by: ShannonRenee at May 6, 2008 02:50 PM
Good to hear from you on this topic again. To answer your question, my blog is where I put forth the most effort to present a solid front. And it's where I show up the most.
But I find myself troubled by the idea of a digital ME or a digital YOU. I'm not digital. All of this stuff and these comments are no different than notes I used to pass during class. The were just sign posts that hinted where I might be found.
I suppose someday they will all be sign posts that hint where I used to be found.
And there's comfort in both of those thoughts.
I look forward to exploring the links in this post.
Posted by: Mark Goodyear at May 6, 2008 01:46 PM
loved the note to self - where did you put that sticky stuff again - i like the digital me idea - and think you should probably have a table of contents and index on pulver.com and facebook of what where and when and who and the future digital 3.0 you - one question will the real jeff pulver please stand up -
safe trip from toronto to chicago too
g-oh
Posted by: geo at May 6, 2008 01:45 PM
"Is there one place on the Internet that properly contains all of the elements that are a proper reflection of who you are and how you want to be understood by others? "
Oops. No. There isn't.
I addressed the blog part of this question in this post:
http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-does-your-blog-relate-to-your.html
Part of the answer is in aggregation.
But I think curated aggregation is the best answer for me.
I've got video on the web from back in 2004, and earlier. It's all hidden an blog archives. Not the best place for new people to find it.
I'm working on sorting this all out.
--Steve
Posted by: steve Garfield at May 6, 2008 12:56 PM
interesting! ... but randomness is the crucial point in getting to know people via the Web. the amazing thing is how good one gets to know people just by some fragments (and the spaces in between), and by their "voice". while this is fundamentally inadequate idea on the Web: "Is there one place on the Internet that properly contains all of the elements that are a proper reflection of who you are and how you want to be understood by others?" of course not. and there never will be.
Posted by: martin at May 6, 2008 11:39 AM
Great blog post, Jeff. Loved how you're so integrated with the web that when people meet you, it's like they've known you for a while. Funny how it works, huh? But a question that I have (and this is probably semantics) is how would you define "Life 2.0" versus "Life 3.0"?
Posted by: Ken at May 6, 2008 10:26 AM