The Cosmopolitan Blog

I nearly lost my blog last night (DB backup issues), but didn’t, thanks to the diligence of my web host. Still, during the 3 hours of sheer panic, many thoughts went through my mind. Would anyone miss it, other than me? Would i start all over again, or just give up?

Very quickly, i wondered if it was all worth it. I mean, how many people was i really affecting? Afterall, i’m not the most famous blogger in the world, so the answer is “less than the famous bloggers of this world”… but even for those famous bloggers… don’t they sometimes think that they’re just talking to thin air?

So then i thought… here we are, in this little bubble of technology… blogs, twitter, social media, etc… but who really cares other than those who know about it? For every 10 twitterers, there are a million that have never even heard the word, let alone understanding it’s power. Does that make them less of a customer or an audience? Should we ignore them?

Too often, when i request feedback on a particular trend or idea, i find that all i get is the feedback of the last person we spoke to. I hear “the trend is to start using this technology”, but actually, it’s not… it’s just that we spoke to 5 people in our own bubble and they all said the same. But what about the rest of the world out there? We seem to forget what “gathering market feedback” really means.

So imagine my relief when i found out that one of those famous bloggers was talking about exactly that, hours later. Read “Get out of your own way” from Mitch Joel. Then come back and tell me, do you agree? Are we just that conceipted that we think that everyone does it the way we do it?

Mitch Joel, today, in his TwistImage blog revealed some alarming statistics about young teens and how so many of them have electronically posted/sent some form of “nude or semi-nude photographic or video images of themselves” or received someone else’s. He questions whether this will lead to further sexual activities in even younger children.

My comment on his blog was this:

I think kids will always find new ways to push the sexual boundaries, each generation pushed it one step further. If it wasn’t online nudity, it would be something else.

But for us pre-internet adults, the other reason we value privacy is because we are worried about who is out there that will abuse of this information and come and stalk us or our kids.

8-10 years ago, I was one of the first people i knew to have a “personal website” containing my resume and a bit about my life. Others around me were shocked that i would make this information public.

8-10 years ago, not many people had a website, so my info was probably easier to be found by predators. Today, EVERYONE is one facebook, and if you think you have scandalous pictures of yourself, don’t worry, someone probably has worse.

Suddenly. you become anonymous in this sea of personal information.

So, i wonder, are our traditional fears still rational? Online predators exist, we know that, but if EVERYONE is sharing their information, doesn’t it make it harder for them to find YOUR kid?

Has private information become less valuable and more of a commodity?

I would like to hear your thoughts. Is the definition of privacy changing? Should we no longer be scared of posting private information online? What about for our kids? Do they have a point, now, when they say “but mom! everyone’s doing it!”?

One element of a successful blog is branding. Either branding of the blog itself, or of the author. The marketing circle in Montreal is a small one, so you’d have to be living under a rock to not have heard of Mitch Joel, a branding guru and president of TwistImage. Mitch Joel also has the perfect example of personal branding and web presence, since this is what he advocates. For example, his avatar/picture is always the same one, regardless of which site, chat, social network, blog or application you find him on.

So one of the ways i am planning on making this blog more successful is to ensure a presence for CosmoChick. One of the ways i do that, for example, is, every site i sign up for, I use the same user name and update my profile with the same information and links to this blog. On the right column of this blog, you’ll notice i started a “web presence” widget, where, as much as possible, i will try to add the different places where i hold the CosmoChick identity. I look forward to hearing from you on suggestions of where else i should sign up.

Today, my goal is to look into online playlist sites, and see if my online identity can be extended to the music I’m currently listening to. There’s YouTube, of course, but i’m about to go explore Deezer and Seeqpod too. If I’m successful, I’ll be able to find a widget of some sort that will allow me to share my tunes with you (legally, of course!).

That’s it, i’m done, this could possibly be one of my shortest blog posts EVAH!