Digital Voyeurism Is Acceptable

Has this ever happened to you?

You’re walking around when someone approaches and asks if you are…you? They know your name, or if different – Twitter name, along with your most recent updates. They’ve been following your latest trip, speaking engagement, and car accident shared on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The glee in their eye tells you everything you need to know, they think you’re special.

If you’ve been spending the past year or longer on the most popular social networking sites, the story above has most likely occurred. Especially if you’ve been engaging and sharing as opposed to fire-hosing messages. As our networks increase daily, the likelihood of our content landing in the laps of others increases exponentially. The amount of information we’re learning about one another in this hyper-fast communication era is changing the landscape of relationship building.

Look at your network today. Has it grown significantly over the past couple of years or is it roughly the same size? For most people, developing and nurturing a large network of professionals in a variety of industries makes good business sense. Just look at groups like LBN and BNI as examples. Today more than ever our business comes from referrals, friends, online exposure and those we work hard to develop synergy within our non-competing core competencies.

There will come a day in the not too distant future where we won’t be talking about social media, or rather we won’t mention it by name like we do now. The Internet will continue to evolve and those taking advantage of staying connected, providing value, and sharing relevant content will do well compared to their counterpart. Individuals and companies resistant to learning the latest technology will continue to fall further behind the competition.

I’m constantly reminded how voyeuristic of a society we are. People are tracking our every move, latest connections, and most current whereabouts. If you ever start thinking people aren’t paying attention to you, you’d probably be wrong. Sure they might not comment back or give you any indication that they’re tuned in but trust me, they are. If your network is small or you’re just getting started, naturally you’ll have fewer peeking behind the curtains but be assured, they’re lurking.

Are you happy with what they see?

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