I believe that five years ago every single active web person was sleeping and walking and talking on how he could get more people involve with his content.
Everyone with a blog was anticipating more and more comments.
Everyone was trying to visit other blogs, stating his presence, giving huge effort on how he could tempt visitors not only coming to his place but stating it too with a line or two.
Then the masses discovered Facebook.
Commenting on status , taking quizzes or declaring likes, sounded a lot more easy to attract audience.
Most of them didn’t –and still don’t- have any exquisite purpose.
They just want to be liked.
Some want to be talked about.
And some others want… to be sold at any price by any cost [per click/per view/per day/per way..], leaving content and usage of engagement spaces in a chaotic order which has almost completely banned ..quality.
Then Twitter came in to the masses lives.
Anyone could chat.
Twenty or so tweets in a timeline, changing every minute do an excellent job on disappearing really interesting stuff.
Hashtags, not only are not being realized in use by tweeterers but they tend to become a silly game of adults, genious or not, expressions [I have done that too. I admit]
Anyone can chat publicly with “targeted anyone” about anything.
Chaotic yes. Evolutionary may be. Promising no.
That’s the death penalty for Twitter value.
[That and the auto feed intrusion of friendfeed conversations]
Among all these like-a-community networks [blogs, facebook, twitter] friends become a parody of communication result.
“Hey! U r my facebook friend. Join me on twitter!” – wrong
“Hey! I have a blog u know, dear lost cousin of mine discovering me on facebook. Come! Comment!”- wrong
Now, I know most people don’t like rules, but I think I’m allowed to conclude by my experience [authoring that is and being on web producing content for a long long time now].
So here come some buzzword rules we desperately want to eliminate from human iq on web.
1. The S-word. Settings. Every single social network or service has Settings. Settings exist because I may like u very much in real life, but ..detest you in twitter cause u’r creating noise.
2. The P- word. Privacy. Privacy is allowed in every decent network. Privacy means I may do create and share but it’s my undoubted right to open the doors to whom I choose.
3. The M-word. Moderation. Moderating expressions [and not editing them partly] is like confronting people in your own party. U have the right to speak in my web apartment. I have the right to throw u away without even giving u an excuse if that’s what I believe I must do.
All social networks are fractals with a plus [I call them].
Each one has almost the same dynamic of use with any other *plus* something more or different [interface, inner purpose, even options for ads’ appearances etc.]
And it’s up to us how we choose to use these features.
Every user can choose among variable Settings.
Every user can set his own state of Privacy.
We can even delete or remove comments if not Moderating them from the beginning.
And yes. That’s our Right.
But we should not forget among all these free will powered acts that, beyond Settings, Privacy or Moderation, we are here engaging either we like it or not, and that’s a step towards other people’s territories.
So it’s not engaging that we must provoke [engagment in a social place is an apriori step] wondering about the Hows, but Use to evolve so Respect can enhance engagement harnessing noise and producing quality result even in a fun party situation.
E.V.
Το Social Whale [όπως γράφει ο Νίκος Παπανώτας 
