The “Look at Me!” Generation Goes Mobile

RobBrady

One of the major buzzes of the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment conference in San Francisco this week is the new mobile social networking phenomenon. Adapting the models of the likes of Facebook and MySpace and making them portable, these services allow people to create networks of friends on the move.

Following Google’s acquisition of mobile social networking start-up Zingku last month, coupled with the choice of Facebook’s co-founder Dustin Moscovitz to deliver today’s keynote address at this major show, serves to highlight the importance of this new technology.

Social networking services allow friends, families or colleagues to stay in touch wherever they go, primarily (primarily is the important word here!) through their mobile phones.

It also offers GPS geo-tagging of pictures and the ability to leave geo-tagged notes about restaurants, clubs, bars, shops, attractions etc. This alongside services that show where your contacts are on a map allowing you to find each other, communicate and even arrange real-world meetings. Yes, you remember, the face-to-face type of thing, just like in the old days! Joking aside, this new reality may actually facilitate more physical meet-ups if we all know who’s in the neighbourhood, pub or club. However, it may also come in very handy as an avoidance technique!

According to Jupiter Research, 28 percent of teens surveyed are interested in utilising MySpace on their cell phone. Utilising a mobile platform for blogging, messaging, sharing photos, videos and even what mood you’re in, a new fully wired – or should that be wireless - generation is emerging who will not only broadcast their whereabouts, but also their lives, as they happen, to a virtual network of contacts. In effect, a livecast and instant multicast diary with a searchable history of how you and your contacts are progressing through life – a new way of viewing reality.

Like the often regretted youthful tattoo, will your searchable reality come back to haunt you in years to come? At face value, social networking seems to be the antithesis of the more traditional online and offline privacy values. The “Look At Me” generation appears to have no real worries about making their lives public property. Indeed, even leaving aside Facebook and MySpace profiles, the many millions who have already uploaded the potted version of their life via online CVs will likely shrug off any such concerns.

For those of more mature years, too much exposure through a transparent lifestyle tends to be at best uncomfortable and, at worst, embarrassing. This unease is greatly diminished for the new tech-savvy mobile generation and the transparency is in fact, conversely, proving attractive to them.

Creating a personal “fan club” that shares your favourite bookmarks, rated content and pass-it-on comments is alluring to many. Blow-by-blow, as it happened (or how it was reported to have happened), life histories will clearly blur the traditional boundaries between public self and private self. According to a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, already 34% of teens that have posted online profiles have kept no part of them hidden from public view.

This begs the question; will this new way of communicating actually alter the way people live? Will networkers live their life differently maybe attempting to publicly present a much cooler or more exciting lifestyle than they previously experienced? Shakespeare said “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players”; will social networking turn us all into a more accomplished bunch of actors?
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Robert Brady

mostdom

No different to, or even as a result of these webforums. People will always have a need to communicate, and are inteested in new ways of speaking to new people.

DennisN

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