2008 July | Social Desire

Archive for July, 2008

Is it possible to have Intimacy online?

Image by uayebt

Lately, I have been thinking a lot lately about Web 2.0, Social Networking & Romance. With the Next Generation of Web bringing all parts of the World together through Social Media got me wondering what this has done to Love & Intimacy.

Is it possible to have Intimacy online?

I spend most of my awake time online. My work depends on it. During my time online I have met some amazing people. I have built some really strong friendships with these people. I’ve started websites and enjoyed projects with them and adore these people as I would friends and colleagues that I had met in reality. But, friendship love and romantic love is very different from each other. Can Intimacy happen online?

Looking for the definition of Intimacy I came across these bullet points on What is intimacy in a relationship?…

"Intimacy with another person is the:

Unmasking of yourself in order to make yourself vulnerable in a trusting, loving, secure relationship.

Sense that you have a special, unique, and distinct bond joining you and another person.

Sense of closeness, proximity, and being “in tight.”

Sense of oneness, unity, and uniqueness.

Sense of being exposed, undefended, and fragile.

Sharing of tenderness, caring, and affection.

Sharing of secrets, hidden tales, and private thoughts.

Free will offering and receiving of each others’ generosity, giving and sharing.

Sense of being in a non-punitive, non-abusive and non-coercive environment.

Mutual respect, recognition, and approval of each other’s need to be a sexual being. In a marital relationship this shared sexuality ultimately results in loving sexual intercourse.*"

*Removing the last bullet point as I want to keep Intimacy and Sex separate. When I talk about intimacy it has nothing to do with sex.

With Dating Social Networks and Instant Messaging it is possible to meet people from all parts of the World. This opens up the door to romance and long distance relationships.

I remember when I was a teenager…. I had a boyfriend that lived a few hours away. We didn’t get to see each other nearly as much as we would like. And, since phone calls were long distance & very expensive we didn’t get to speak as often as we would have liked either. So, much of our conversation was done via snail mail. But, there was something bitter sweet about this absence as well. This absence of spontaneous conversation added to the excitement when we did actually get to see each other.

Now a days, conversation doesn’t have to be so limited as they did many years ago. Long distance relationships can thrive much easier than they could in the past. But, still the same question comes to my mind….. Is it possible to have intimacy online?

Well, in order for me to come to a conclusion lets go through each of the bullet points that the article from Coping.org provided above….

Unmasking of yourself in order to make yourself vulnerable in a trusting, loving, secure relationship.
Yes, we can do that. But, it would also take the other person involved to do the same thing for it to work.
Sense that you have a special, unique, and distinct bond joining you and another person.
Sure. You can do that online.
Sense of closeness, proximity, and being “in tight.”
Sense of closeness…. yes. Proximity…. no. Hmmmmm.
Sense of oneness, unity, and uniqueness.
Yes, I believe you can.
Sense of being exposed, undefended, and fragile.
Yes!! So, totally yes.
Sharing of tenderness, caring, and affection.
Well, I suppose. But, I’m also reminded that these three wonderful things (tenderness, caring, and affection) will come virtually….. without touch. Can a relationship build without touch??
Sharing of secrets, hidden tales, and private thoughts.
Uh, yeah! As a matter of fact, this is a lot of what this type of relationship will do.
Free will offering and receiving of each others’ generosity, giving and sharing.
Yes, but again limited. After all, the relationship is long distance…. and virtual.
Sense of being in a non-punitive, non-abusive and non-coercive environment.
Sure, but I also think that safety and the sense of safety is given easily because of the factor they are so far away from each other and shielded behind the computer screen.
Mutual respect, recognition, and approval of each other’s need to be a sexual being. In a marital relationship this shared sexuality ultimately results in loving sexual intercourse.
Again, I’m going to keep this part of the discussion out as I want to keep sex & intimacy separate from each other. I’m talking strictly about intimacy here.

So, I feel for the most part that intimacy can be done through an online relationship, but at a limited level. Let me explain…

Sense of - Many of the bullet points about intimacy above started with "sense of". Meaning that I would get the sense of closeness, sense of oneness, sense of tenderness, etc… To get a sense of something you would need to get to know this person. They would need to earn your trust and you theirs. You need trust to earn this sense… the sense of closeness, oneness, tenderness, etc… But, without actually meeting this person face-to-face would you actually ever achieve this feeling wholeheartedly? Or would you get to that "wholehearted" point after you actually met that person?
Body language - When you are communicating with a significant other face-to-face there is a lot of body language going on. You are beginning to learn about each other through this body language and expression. This is totally absent from an online relationship.
Touch - I feel touch is a form of intimacy. For me…. an important part of intimacy. Without touch I feel intimacy would be very limited. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think an online relationship couldn’t work, bur for me it could only go so far.

Another thing that has been on my mind about intimacy and online relationships is the fact that there is that space in between the couple…. Internet Space. What does this space mean?…

No bad days. If you are having a bad day and are in a rotten mood you can stay offline. Your significant other won’t see you this way.
No need to stutter over a difficult or uncomfortable question. If you are asked something that causes you shift or become uncomfortable you can sit back and think about the best way to answer the questions. Or, don’t answer at all….. come up with an excuse and log offline quickly.
No friends or family interfering. Your online relationship seems wonderful and super easy when you can have a relationship without the added interference, huh?

And, these are just my first immediate thoughts on this. There are tons of others that come to mind, but I’m sure you get the idea. This "internet space" causes your virtual significant other to see you always in a good light…. no bad days. This is not reality.

What do some of my Plurking friends think?

So, can there be intimacy in an online relationship?

Yes, but I believe it can work up to a point. I think in order for the relationship to grow anywhere you have to spend some "reality time" with each other to see if the relationship will work.

Look, I’m not saying that Internet Love is impossible. I love Web 2.0 and the fact that Social Media brings so much of us together…. the chance of us falling in love is endless. All I’m saying is that I think that in order to take your internet romance to the next level is to bring Reality into your beautiful Web 2.0 love life at some point.

Posted in Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Basics | 11 Comments »

What the hell can social media do for me?

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

This Featured Guest Post is by Mark Hayward of MyTropicalEscape.com.

Why am I asking - because your clients want to know! How do I know - because I am them.

image source: azrainman

I am a small business owner in the purest sense of the term, in fact, it’s just my wife and I who run our bed and breakfast here in the Caribbean and marketing dollars are NOT plentiful.

Of course, most people who read Social Desire are social media or SEO experts. Therefore, there is no reason for me to extol the virtues, power, and inherent value of social media to you.

But, what about the small business (non-social media expert) perspective?

Recently, I had a discussion with a really great guest who runs his own business-to-business trade magazine for the wedding industry. Out of curiosity I asked him if his magazine has a website or any type of online presence.

And I almost fell out of my seat when he said, “NO!”

The guest then went on to explain to me that they have run the magazine successfully for over twenty years and he pointedly asked,

“Why should I change now?”

I highlight the above statement because I assume that this is the type of pessimistic attitude that most of you in the social media profession face on a daily basis.

My Small Business as a Social Media Example

Because he was a paying guest I had to politely disagree with his hesitance to establish an online presence, and furthermore, the next time you come across a skeptical client I would like you to feel free to use my business as an example.

You see, the bed and breakfast that my wife and I purchased a little over a year ago had no real financial records and essentially sat empty with no marketing or promotional activities for over two years. In essence, even though we purchased the business structure, we had to build up a clientele base from scratch.

So with the ink still fresh on the mortgage papers and a new mountain of debt, I thought –

“Oh $hit, what now?”

Paying for advertising in traditional print media was financially out of the question for us, so I only had one option, the internet. From an expertise perspective, I had never run a business before, nor had I blogged, or been into social media and online networking. Pretty much, I assumed blogging and social media were for pimply-faced kids and people with too much time on their hands. But I was desperate and decided to jump in and learn.

What did I do?

I started two promotional websites (culebra blog and MyTropicalEscape) to support my primary business the Palmetto Guesthouse
I began to dabble in social media (StumbleUpon, Twitter, Plurk, etc)
I read a lot of websites (particularly – doshdosh, seth godin, skellie, and problogger)
I began networking online (via Twitter and some online marketing forums)

The Fruits of My Labor

For the short-term thinker I believe that the concept of social media, as it relates to small business success, can be a very difficult one to grasp.

I know from my own experience when I reached my seventh or eighth month of blogging and trying to promote my business online I was frustrated by my perceived lack of progress. I was ready to give up. In fact, I was so disillusioned that I decided to put my site [MyTropicalEscape.com] up for sale at SitePoint.

Then something crazy happened!

Literally, the day my site was going to go into escrow I received an email from an editor at a fairly large U.S. travel magazine. Turns out that she was working on a story regarding, “The Ten Best Islands to Live On” and she wanted to interview me about my experience on Culebra. When I inquired as to how she found me, she replied,

“Why I just happened to StumbleUpon your blog.”

The interview, which you can see online at Islands Magazine, would have cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000 if I had paid to advertise in the magazine. Because it is currently summer in the northeast US I have not noticed a huge spike in reservations just yet, but the article has already sent well over 2000 visitors to my bed and breakfast’s website, who might not have found us otherwise.

Additionally, just when I did not think my online efforts could net any better results, about two weeks after the Islands Magazine writer emailed I received an actual phone call from a freelance writer for Conde Nast Travel Magazine who wanted to interview me.

Amazingly, the Conde Nast writer was also doing an article on my little island home. During her research phase she just happened to get pointed to my blog from one of her Twitter contacts, which for this former non-social media believer meant I was able to chock up another $25,000 worth of complementary promotional advertising.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the Conde Nast Traveller print article made it online at cntraveller.com but if you have the July issue you can go to the “Word of Mouth” section and you will see my that my business has been written about in a very positive light (and they also included our phone number and a website link) and it did not cost me a dime.

How do I think social media can help (really) small businesses? Pretty much the same way social media can assist large business and mega-corporations:

promotion
networking
branding
as catalyst for collaboration

However, you must think long-term and be persistent, consistent, and proactive if you want your online efforts to help support your business activities.

(Editor’s note: Mark is getting ready to launch a fairly significant online project with some blogging friends. You can follow him on Twitter or visit his site MyTropicalEscape.)

Posted in Blogging, Guest Posts, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, Web 2.0 | 20 Comments »

Selling versus Telling - Does your site convert?

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

This Featured Guest Post is by Edward Beckett of Florida Search Engine Optimization.

Image by jakeliefer

It would be interesting to know just how many people in Internet marketing actually had professional sales experience before marketing on the web. Having had a bit of experience in several sales sectors, I had my share of small paychecks before I decided that I really needed to learn what turned prospects into clients – pain, is a great motivator. That being said, I see many web sites that do not produce sales and I believe that one of the main reasons for these site’s lack of success is due to sending the readers the wrong message. To sell a product or service, a prospective client normally needs to have trust in the seller. If trust is not established from the message on the web site, the prospective client will simply move on to a site that captures their attention, and wins their trust.

To elaborate a bit, I’m going to describe some methods that Hollywood uses to keep their audience’s attention. I entertain quite a fascination for movies such as The Zeitgeist Movie, The Bourne Identity and The Matrix. In all three of these movies, the one thing I noticed that kept my mind in suspense was the constant state of flux between believing and disbelieving what is being implied in the movie’s story lines. In the Matrix reloaded, The Merovingian retorted when Morpheus stated, “You know why we are here.” with,” I am a trafficker of information, I know everything I can. The question is, do you know why you are here?”

With this question, the direction of the dialogue centers on the implied message that the Merovingian probably knows … a lot. This question sets the stage for the rest of the conversations that develop for that scene. But what’s important to us here is that he established credibility by the way he framed his question – he did not have to show proof of his knowledge, and no one was led to doubt what he said. He simply assumed control of the conversation by positioning himself with a question that would poise him as an authority. The point is that by asking the right questions, you may imply authority on a matter without having to “sell” someone on it. Your position may be established by the questions that you ask. Once you have established credibility … then you might gain your clients trust. Attempting to sell what you have without first gaining their trust … will usually fail.

But credibility and trust alone are not enough to keep people interested in what you have to say. Curiosity keeps people interested in what you have to say … and to keep them “listening to your questions”, (a subtle hint?) you have to find something that “they are interested in.” An old but still effective acronym in consultative sales is: WIIFM, which means, What’s In It For Me? To let the potential client know what “they are getting” from what you have to offer. Here is a news flash which may shock some egomaniac salesmen (and women). Your potential clients don’t care about you or your product, if it doesn’t satisfy a need for them. For example, let’s go back to the scene with The Merovingian and see how Hollywood keeps the audience’s curiosity and attention after intellectualizing the viewers in a conversation that parallels a logical labyrinth.

To add an element of curiosity (and excitement) to the conversation, the viewing audience was kept quite amused as The Merovingian went on to describe the climactic scene which transpires from a dessert he sent to a lady across the room … He seduced the lady through a programmatically orgasmic dessert. Watching that lady eat her dessert gave me a sudden urge to speak to my college counselor about modifying my computer science degree to include a specialty in culinary programming. Though I didn’t perform eye tracking analytics on the rest of the audience in the theater with me, I think it’s safe to say that of the males in the theater we can safely estimate that better than half of the guy’s eyes were looking at the lower half of the screen as that lady enjoyed her dessert. Though this is an extreme example, through delivering well structured questions to your readers, you may open up opportunities to uncover needs by making your potential clients curious – And if you’re really good, you might even make them hungry for what you have to offer.

Want some more info on what I can do for ya? Send me a message on my blog or pay me a visit at Florida Search Engine Optimization.

Posted in Guest Posts, SEM, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Tips and Tutorials | 2 Comments »

TheNanny612 and the Three Avatars

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

I wrote a post regarding my avatar change on Collective-Thoughts. This post is a continuation of that. The avatar I had chose at the end of that post didn’t work out. And since my 6 year old daughter helped me come up with my final choice for an avatar I decided to write this post in the form of a Child’s Story, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears".

Image by Super Dave Chen

TheNanny612 and the Three Avatars

TheNanny612 was a Young Lady who spent much of her days Social Networking. She had her own land in her part of the Web 2.0 World.

Normally this Social Media Lady would had been content to go about her usual Social Networking, but on this day she chose instead to cut off her long curly hair. Knowing that once she did this she would have to perform the duty of choosing the right avatar for her part of the Web 2.0 World named Social Desire.

It was on this day that TheNanny612 Avatar Journey began.

TheNanny612 didn’t think the duty of choosing an avatar would be a difficult one. After all, what is the big deal, really? An avatar simply is a picture to help members of Online Communities know who you are…. is that really such a big deal?

So, TheNanny612 simply had her picture taken a few times with a cell phone. She chose the best of the batch of pics, cropped it and sized it perfectly. She made each picture into different sizes to easily accommodate the different requirements at different Social Networking Communities. The smallest Avatar size is 50×50 for Sphinn and StumbleUpon uses a 475×475 on its About page.

TheNanny612 Avatar #1

475 x 475	50 X 50

She really liked this picture, but it was so dark. She didn’t realize how dark until she had it resized to fit Sphinn’s 50×50 Avatar requirement. The size Avatar for Sphinn is so small & so dark that it is terribly difficult to recognize who the picture is of….. That will never do.

TheNanny612 sighed as she really thought this was going to be simple. "Oh well.", she said as she moved on to the next stop.

She took a look at the first picture to see what the problem was and came up with a few of things.

To dark.
Little Contrast. TheNanny612’s dark hair against the dark chair. There was absolutely no contrast.
The picture was taken with a Cell phone. The quality of cell phone pictures aren’t always good enough to work with.

So, TheNanny612 decided that she needed to do things differently. She decided to do everything completely opposite from what she did last time.

She dressed in a white blouse and sat on a light rug in front of a cherry stained door. This is how the picture looked in its largest and smallest forms:

TheNanny612 Avatar #2

475 x 475	50 X 50

TheNanny612 was initially happy with this photograph. She likes the black and white look and the contrast is nice. But, notice how the picture changes when it is made smaller. The change in size makes it difficult to recognize that its TheNanny612 at all. She began to think that there will be no 50×50 avatar that will be easy to recognize, but she knew that wasn’t true. After all, her last 50×50 avatar was easy to recognize.

So, TheNanny612 went back on her search for the Perfect Avatar…. the Avatar that was "Just Right."

The problems with the 2nd Avatar?? There were a few…

It’s a lovely shot large, but when made smaller it is difficult to recognize.
The picture is simply to light. The black and white look washes TheNanny612 out. She will not stand out compared to others which is very important in Social Networking.
The contrast problem in the 1st photograph caused TheNanny612 to dress in light colors, but this did nothing for the photograph either.

TheNanny612 was truly frustrated. She asked out loud, "Why is this so hard?" All of a sudden it came to her…. she needed to figure out what made her original Avatar Memorable.

What made the Original TheNanny612 Avatar Memorable

An Unusual Head shot
Sepia - I didn’t use Black & White….. Sepia added a bit of color.
Side Angle
Not the entire head
Nothing much else in the background.

More determined than ever TheNanny612 decided to stick with what seemed to work with her original avatar. The most important thing to her was that the avatar needed to look just as good small as it did large. And, up until this point that had been TheNanny612’s struggle. She needed to stop posing so much & get back to basics…. get back to what worked for her in the past.

TheNanny612 decided to hand the camera to her 6 year old daughter and allow her daughter to snap a few random shots. Little did she know the perfect avatar would be taken by the young child.

TheNanny612 went through all the photographs taken by her daughter that day. She came across one that she felt would be a perfect fit if cropped just right. This is what she came up with:

TheNanny612 Avatar #3

475 x 475	50 X 50

The first first Avatar was too dark, The 2nd Avatar was too light, and the 3rd Avatar was just right!!

With each Avatar mistake TheNanny612 learned something and the final Avatar was the nicest in all the Land.

The Moral of this story…

Sometimes things don’t go well the first time around or even the 2nd. But, as long as you make each a learning experience then the outcome is usually good one.

The End.

Posted in Humor, Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, Sphinn, StumbleUpon, Tips and Tutorials, Uncategorized, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Basics | 12 Comments »

Social Desire

Archive for July, 2008

Is it possible to have Intimacy online?

Is it possible to have Intimacy online?

What the hell can social media do for me?

But, what about the small business (non-social media expert) perspective?

“Oh $hit, what now?”

What did I do?

The Fruits of My Labor

Then something crazy happened!

Selling versus Telling - Does your site convert?

TheNanny612 and the Three Avatars

TheNanny612 and the Three Avatars

TheNanny612 Avatar #1

TheNanny612 Avatar #2

What made the Original TheNanny612 Avatar Memorable

TheNanny612 Avatar #3

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Shana Albert

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