According to Grant Leboff, the ubiquity of social media means that we all live our lifetimes in the goldfish bowl of our own celebrity rather than for the traditional analogue duration of 15 minutes fame.
To compete with Facebook, Flickr & social media services as well as ‘retain’ their customers, last week Twitter introduced an identification feature that enables photo tagging.
Nowadays we are all ‘superstars’ and celebrities since – for the first time in history – we all have access to media channels. Whether it is Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube, an increasing portion of our lives plays out in the public domain. This digital and social media ubiquity has severe ramifications: Your life is always public – yet you are not privy to the same advice and support celebrities enjoy when managing their reputations.
Whether it is a job interview or a love interest, people can and will go online to find out more about you. What they see will affect how successful you are. Everything you do, say and also the people you connect with provides information and insight about who you are. This can be leveraged for good or can harm you – do you understand how? Nowadays we are effectively all marketers since we have to curate and manage our own reputations in public. Opting out is simply not an option. From delegate lists at conferences to Twitter photo tags or holiday snaps, information is being and will be posted about you whether you like it or not.
