World Wide Web is not just for browsing, it is for branding yourself!
I happen to read across a blog post titled "Branding Yourself with A Blog". I sincerely recommend this post to everybody. Blogging is not just for fun, it is a way to brand oneself. Take myself as an example, through my blogging at Thinking Space, Semantic Focus, Internet Evolution, and several other places, I have branded myself to be an active thinker and researcher on the most frontier Web technologies.
There is another interesting reading recently. Jeff Jarvis in his post "more writers than readers" tells that now there are more online writers than regular daily newspaper readers. Although this claim is less shocking than saying that online writers are outnumber online readers [I am sorry for the previous miss-reading of Jeff's post. I have revised my statement respectively. The main idea I want to express, however, is still in Jeff's post, I believe.], the phenomenon still shows a silent migration of where the value of the Web is. More Web users start to recognize that the Web is a place not only for reading, but also for publishing, and eventually for branding and prompting themselves. Hence people are willing to write more onto the Web, not for attracting many readers, but for engaging potentially only few person who indeed appreciate the presented brand.
Combing both the post I just cited, we may draw an interesting insight: World Wide Web is not just for browsing, it is for branding yourself! One more step towards the center of this thought---World Wide Web is where to build latent personality that we could hardly do before the age of the Web.
World Wide Web is a network of pages, World Wide Web is a collection of data, World Wide Web is a pool of services. But most intrinsically, World Wide Web is a web of people. This specification is not just about the fact that World Wide Web connects people. More critically, World Wide Web itself is a web of literally specified latent personalities of the people who have participated to the Web. This recognition supported by the content of the two cited posts matches perfectly to the view of Web evolution I authored.
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4 comments:
actually, that wasn't on the web. that wsas comparing the number who create content online vs. the number who buy daily newspapers. not sure that difference is relevant to your point but just wanted to be straight.
hi jeff,
Thank you for pointing out the improper citation I originally made with respect to your post. I have fixed it and put a note of my revision into the post.
I am a loyal reader of your BuzzMachine. I like your writing and especially the thoughts in your articles.
cheers,
Yihong
Agree with your post that our online identity does take us to a new level and creates a different kind of images of ourselves. I often come across articles where the authors explain how the online identities are becoming crucial in branding someone as a Techie, Geek, or a Jerk.
Good luck with your interview result at Microsoft. It was really good to read your experiences there.
Here's gold:
"Hence people are willing to write more onto the Web, not for attracting many readers, but for engaging potentially only few person who indeed appreciate the presented brand."
Thanks
trevor
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