Google, in all these years, and more recently facebook. These two websites have been taking over our personal lives like never before.
Social networking sites have become a way of expression for many, and life would have sure been incomplete without these sites. The whole world has shrunk, and it is quite important in this global village where we live. These media have also bridged borders and brought about cross-cultural understanding and sensitivity.
I have been reading “The Facebook Effect”, and though it is a book more to do with the founding of facebook, it gives good insights of the effect, and the difference facebook has made to our lives. As Mark Zuckerberg, in “The Social Network” puts it aptly, “I would want to take this whole social experience, and put it up online for everyone to interact”.
It is interesting to see the local players also acting up swiftly to this new medium and using it effectively. Social media marketing is a completely new industry that has come into place in marketing.
We have heard of the gogola (selling golas made of mineral water) branded completely with google. Now here comes the chat bhandaar who does something similar.
I recently saw “THE SOCIAL NETWORK”, and what a movie (the review would soon be up). The movie got me thinking about the phenomena that facebook has become, and how much and integral part it has become in our lives. One of my friend, pursuing her MBA, had recently stated, “ we are in an age, where early morning instead of running for the newspaper, we run to the laptop, to log on to facebook!”. Needless to say, she had said this on facebook.
This got me into a discussion with a friend, who should we add on FB? This friend had spoken about her occasional cleaning up of the friends list from her profile, and also the way in which she accepts all family and friend requests, just to remove them a couple of days later( they would not come to know unless checked again!). The bigger question is, should a person add his/her boss on facebook?
There must have been a hazaar people telling you not to add your boss. It would just open a door for the boss to spy on you, and be in complete control of you, even personally! In this post, as always, I would like to estabilish why you should actually befriend your boss on facebook.
You get to know your boss on personal level, and can use this effectively in your next appraisal.
Learn the norms of the higher level. FB would allow you too peek into the life of your boss, and you would get a fair know how, to behave and the kind of life your boss and other superiors live.
Want to get back to your boss? Put up pictures of the party last night, with loadsa alcohol and women drooling around. That 35 year old, self considerate coolness of your boss would all turn green in envy. Show him, You have a life!
In case you want to put up a tantrum, but are scared of doing so. Or maybe, If you want to express your displeasure over something, but are unable, try putting it up as your status message, in a very diplomatic way. Well, this assumes that your boss is smart to decipher it.
In almost all cases, we want to tell something to our boss (you are a jerk!), but we don’t be able to. FB would be the right place to tell him so.
And the best part, the government is with you( the US government!).
…Facebook — a place where you’re free to share your true feelings about your employer with all your closest Internet friends. And now you can do so with the confidence that the federal government has your back.
That’s because yesterday the National Labor Relations Board sided with a woman fired from her job after making critical remarks about her boss on Facebook. The woman made the comments during off-work hours from her home computer.
Federal labor law protects workers against reprisal for talking to colleagues on their own time about employment conditions, including comments critical of bosses. And that right extends to employees regardless of whether they’re part of a union.
It’s the same as talking at the water cooler. The point is that employees have protection under the law to talk to each other about conditions at work. (Source: Blog )
Happy Diwali folks. I know it is too late, and inspite of all the promises during the launch, I have not updated for sometime now. Well, I was on a holiday, and I strongly have a clear work life balance. Phew!
Also have been travelling, across south india of late. Nothing close to the travel that I did during induction into my job, but more or less there. In the last one month I have been to Chennai, Cochin, back to Bangalore and then to Hubli. Then again to Bangalore, to vizag and then back to Bangalore. A recent trip to a sea, and back again to Hubli. Well, I don’t think I should b counting Bangalore to Hubli trip as travelling. It is more like a weekly thing of late.
Cleanliness is next to godliness and no doubt in that. But well, while travelling randomly at places, you do tend to compromise on one thing – BATHING. There are times when you don’t be able to find a proper place to take a shower for the day. There are other days when you just don’t have the required change of clean clothes, so why bath at all. Well, most of the times plain simple you just don’t feel like bathing.
Well, anyone who has been in a B-School campus for two years, and especially if your campus was located in the northern part of the country, has sure gone through days of this ordeal. No bath. It is plain simple damn so cold. And well, “I have come to the B-School to get a fat package, not to take a bath in the well maintained bathrooms“.
A typical morning in a B-School.
7:45AM: Neighbour ( if you are in good terms with him/her) wakes you up for the class at 8. You mentally calculate, and say to yourself,” chuck the bath!”, and sleep again. See the bath is the first thing to be foregone!!!
After chucking the other important ablutions too, you finally wake up at 7:57AM for the class at 8. Pop in a ciggie into the mouth, and jog to the class. The ciggie acts like a mouth freshener early in the morning, and a good recharge too. Well, the tobacco smells better than the early morning mouth odour.
Well, that takes care of oral odour, what about the body odour? Deodarants. AXE in fact even had an event once in campus, distributing free samples to everyone. Rightly targeted audience I would say.
Now, I have been using these smart phones too much of late, and wondered how would it be having an IPhone app to help the same. Well, there is an app even to calculate the tip to be given after a meal in a restaurant. So, “Should you Shower?” app would be very popular am sure. What exactly would it look like?
This quintessential fight between the heart and the mind keeps happening all the time. I am sure each on of us regularly face this dilemma, and come to a standstill where we have to select a path. And that, as iterated in the previous post, leads to confusion. Opportunity??
It’s typical in our society to feel a conflict between what we want to do (our heart) and what we feel is practical (our mind). We end up living a good part of our lives doing things that we don’t really like or enjoy. We do and say things that we think are cool, and would help us “fit in” into this artificial sphere formed by the society. We try keeping ourselves contended in our mind, and never realize that it is the heart that needs to be contented.
This does cause heartaches at every point in our lives, but we just get used to it and move one. What would have happened if we had rather listened to the heart in that critical confusing moment? We might have not been this rich, this comfortable, might not be having these luxuries, might be. But then, we would have been much much more happier. And who knows, following your heart, no matter how impractical it might seem, might lead to never foreseen opportunities, and new avenues. A more content life!
Is my heart at fault? Are my feelings just silly and frivolous? Or maybe it’s my mind that’s to blame. It seems like it’s always coming up with conflicting messages anyway.
I remember seeing a poster in a book shop in vizag when I was young – “ choose a career in something you enjoy, and you will never ever have to work a single day in your life!”.
How many of us actually be able to do it? The conformist society comes in place, and camouflages the entire thought process. The security, risk averseness, secure life, etc all these come into picture leaving the dreams on a standstill and keeping them on hold, most of the times forever.
What does one do in such a dilemma? Whose side does one take in such situations – Heart or Mind?
Heart vs. Mind?
A perfect analogy to this heart mind thing would be this. Imagine yourself as this young 28 something guy, who wants to ( heart calling) get married to this good looking simple girl, and has been pursuing her leaving his flirtatious behaviour behind. Now, in this pursuit, where he starts thinking if he would actually get the simple girl ever, there is this awesomely good looking super hotel seductress( read mind) who shows herself. This simple guy is now getting attracted to the deep cleavages( read benefits in a secure manner) and is drifting towards her, forgetting that his heart still wants to be with the simple girl. The simple girl would be a better deal, but right now the seductress has much more to offer! But.. But.. The true love, the heart, still stays with the simple girl!
The usage of smart phones in the country has gone up manifold, and more and more people everyday are getting hooked to it. The strange urge to check your mail, FB, twitter updates every two minutes, and your phone beeping every moment has captured the young and the old alike in the country.
India, on the back of scorching pace of mobile subscribers growth has taken the second place amongst all the countries for mobile requests that came to admob network. Although U.S is far far ahead accounting for more than half of request, India has garnered close to 6% (more than 800 million) of all requests.( source:http://trak.in/tags/business/2010/04/08/india-mobile-internet-traffic-smartphones/)
As per this Forrester report, 2010 is going to be the year of the Smartphone. A couple of years back, or even maybe a year back, the smartphone revolution was primarily driven by the corporate users and not the normal junta( mango people!). Now, with the prices going down, and more choices available, the consumer segment has also embraced this new fad. ( A big opportunity for everyone in the mobile arena!)
Till last year maybe, most of us used to wait for our company to give us a blackberry, and we would be happy with our nokia’s till then. “Blackberry was a company given device, used only for official purposes” was the normal impression. Not any more. Everybody, with a smartphone in mind, is seriously considering a blackberry. ( I bough the curve last December!)
Till maybe last year, smartphones were more of a status symbol; but now they have become a must-have product for most.
On the lighter side, an interesting study was commissioned recently by a popular dating site correlating the number of sexual partners and smart phone usage.
I have been reading “The Facebook Effect”, and though it is a book more to do with the founding of facebook, it gives good insights of the effect, and the difference facebook has made to our lives. As Mark Zuckerberg, in “The Social Network” puts it aptly, “I would want to take this whole social experience, and put it up online for everyone to interact”.
