Are You a Person or a Brand?

An hour ago, Chris Brogan made the following comment, via Twitter:

Clarity of message is worth more than you know. One topic. Go deep. One topic.

When I debated that point, Chris clarified his reasoning:

[S]imple branding. If you come to me and tell me 41 things, I'll remember 3, if any.

Fair enough. The web is an information orgy, after all.

But I think these statements raise a major issue regarding how we conduct ourselves online, what we expect of each other and what exactly we are.

The Problem of Complexity

With so much information (and so many people) sprawling across the web, there's a temptation to force people to summarize their very essence into 15 second pitches.

The upside? The web becomes more easily navigable.

The downside? Each of us becomes far more limited and replaceable.

If you read this blog because you're interested in my opinions, or because you know me personally, then you view me as a person.

If you read this blog strictly because you're interested in social media, then you see me as a brand --- one of many within your realm of information consumption.

I believe I can be both, depending upon my audience. But Chris's comments seem to question whether we can truly have it both ways, especially when we need to make snap decisions about whom to listen to or what actions to take.

So, to be blunt: Are we individuals or are we brands?

The difference (as I see it):

A person...

* Is multifaceted in interests and abilities
* Is frequently scattered and unable to focus
* Stretches limited resources across multiple channels
* Can be contradictory
* Can make mistakes
* Isn't easily summarized
* Has opinions
* Offends 50% of the populace with those opinions
* Requires a steeper learning curve
* Can evolve without needing permission

A brand...

* Is instantly recognizable
* Is best served when narrowly focused
* Can conquer small markets, then expand
* Often weakens as it expands
* Cares fiercely about "message" and "image"
* Must chart a course and follow through
* Changes slowly and uniformly
* Sees the world in black and white
* Can transcend self-defined borders
* Powers an agenda

Why Does It Matter?

Under these conditions, we have two options when "living" online:

* We can be individuals -- free to dabble, experiment, make mistakes and allow for complexities and contradictions...

* Or we can be brands -- restricted in breadth but limitless in depth, iconic, reductive, and easily replaceable.

Each has their pros and cons, but neither is perfect:

* One seems fickle, the other finite.

* One is unclear and prone to failure due to diffusion of message and purpose...

* The other is constricted and struggles to maintain relevance against faster competitors.

What Should YOU Do?

Obviously, that's up to you. Perhaps you even feel you have the freedom to switch between "personhood" and "brandhood," depending upon your audience. (Google might beg to differ...)

However, this differentiation has consequences. It can help you decide things as complicated or mundane as:

* Your screen-name
* Your signature
* What information you decide to make public
* What outside information is "important" to you
* WHO is "important" to you
* WHY you use the web
* When to speak and when to remain silent
* If you use email, or Twitter, or a blog
* If you need a MySpace or Facebook account

Etc., etc., etc.

On one hand, I worry that a web filled with people is too complex to amount to anything more than a headache of contradictions.

On the other, I suspect a web filled with brands would be a soulless and disposable sphere devoid of meaningful interaction.

And yet... to move forward, don't we need some of each?

What are YOU?

The Problem With Sameness

Should you use the same hiring protocols to find your next programmer AND your next plumber? Seth Godin doesn't think so. And yet, how many companies have a multifaceted approach to hiring employees with vastly different functions?

Does your child have ADD or another learning "disability"? Whitney Hoffman outlines the trials involved with expecting her non-standard learner to conform to a standard learning environment.

I don't think it's a coincidence that social media has such a hard time catching on with the mainstream. After all -- where else in modern society are we taught that our individuality is a blessing, not a curse?

Now, the million-dollar question: If society has long been entrenched to encourage sameness (for ease of governing, business, medicine, production, etc.), how do we disrupt that lengthy tradition without becoming the generation that tore down the curtain but had no answers?

How do you teach the world to think individualistically?

Being Indie Is Hard Work

The Tazza D'Oro cafe is closed for renovations this week, and will reopen tomorrow.

Overheard, from a guy who drove up and learned that lesson the hard way, then turned to his business associate:

Is there a Starbucks near [their destination]?

Notice he didn't say, "Is there another independently owned, green-minded, fair trade-driven coffee shop" nearby?

Apparently, the desire to support independent businesses only works when it's convenient.

(Secret?) Identities

Christopher Penn has a pair of very valid blog posts about how the Web 2.0 is quickly becoming the Matrix 2.0, and on the value of protecting your brand name assets on Twitter.

This got me thinking about a number of related topics.

Self-Defense Real Estate

- Do you own the URL of your name (i.e. "YOU dot com")? If you don't, who does?
- Do you own all available comparison URLs of your name ("YOU dot net, YOU dot tv, etc.)?

If you don't, or if you believe you're "not important enough" to need to, let me ask you this: what happens when you ARE "important enough" to become a household name, even in a very small circle?

Chances are, you'll BECOME popular because other people are talking about you... and other people may realize the value of your name before you do.

The savvy people are out there right now, buying up every URL associated with their own names, "just in case."

The savvier people are out there buying up every URL associated with OTHER PEOPLE'S names...

HappyBaptism.com

- Do you own the URLs for your children's names?

Let's presume that the web, as we know it, is here to stay, and that URLs will still be a valid way around the information superhighway in another 20-30 years.

How many of us have children who -- like ourselves -- may someday grow up to "be someone"?

Imagine how grateful you'd be, as a kid, knowing that your online identity was safely registered by your parents before you could even clutch a mouse. It certainly beats the alternative: knowing that you'll someday need to buy that URL back from some black market identities dealer who's currently using it as an affiliate site.

All Websites Are Actually Real Estate Agencies

- Is your profile registered on MySpace? Facebook? Digg? Twitter? Technorati?...

I recently joined Virb, a new social networking site... or, rather, STBD did.

I initially saw Virb as a new networking / marketing tool -- a cleaner version of MySpace -- so I registered a profile for Something to Be Desired. As I'm writing this post, I realize I haven't yet signed up as myself yet... so I just did.

I could (and should) do the same for every other social networking site on the planet... and every other web app that could be used for marketing, communication and brand imaging. So should you.

EVERY WEBSITE is a potential link into your world -- or your brand / product / business -- for someone else.

Think I'm joking? Google me. What do you see?

As of today, the top search results are:

- Something to Be Desired (the web sitcom I produce)
- The STBD blog
- This blog
- My Technorati tag
- My Blogger profile (including my AIM handle)
- A Jeff Pulver blog post referencing me
- Bryan Person's audio interview with me from PodCamp Boston
- STBD's Network2 show page
- A Chris Brogan interview with me from April of last year
- My MyFeedz tag

Observations?

- The easiest way for people to find me is through my work.
- Blogger and Network2 are ways to find me that I have AT LEAST SOME CONTROL OVER.
- Technorati and MyFeedz tags are ways to find me that I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER.
- Pulver, Person and Brogan's blog posts are also inbound links to my life that I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER.

Two other interesting notes:

- The Brogan interview was several pages down on my personal Google search results in April of last year. (Yes, I ego-surf.) Since then, Brogan and I have each seen our profiles rise, to the point that this same once-buried interview is now hot stuff.

- My MyFeedz tag actually produces no results. I've never even heard of MyFeedz until just now. But evidently other people have, and whatever is said about me there will have a much better chance of being heard by others than what I might say myself on, say, the PodCamp Pittsburgh Feedback page, which doesn't appear until the fourth page of Google search results.

What Does This Mean?

- You'll never have 100% control of how you're viewed by other people -- especially online.
- You DO have SOME control over how you're viewed -- and you should take those opportunities to stake your claim (and "defend your brand").
- You never know when your profile on an arbitrary website, a comment you've left on a blog or something you say in an interview will be stumbled upon by someone else, and THAT WILL BE SOMEONE'S FIRST IMPRESSION OF YOU.

Each of us needs to decide exactly how much of a "public persona" we're interested in cultivating online, and how much of a "private persona" we're willing to live without.

Think Michael Jackson had it bad walking down the street in the '80s without being recognized? That's nothing compared to what Britney Spears contends with from Perez Hilton on a daily basis -- or what you face thanks to Google, MySpace, WordPress, Twitter...

Think for Yourself

As information becomes available in increasing amounts and at ever more rapid speeds, it becomes more and more difficult to draw our own conclusions.

How many hours a day do you spend online -- surfing the web, reading blogs, checking news sites, social networking, answering email, etc.?

Add to that the amount of time you spend with traditional media -- the radio on your morning commute, the paper in a cafe, the evening news on TV.

THEN add in the time you spend talking with other people -- friends, family, spouse, coworkers, the small talk you make with the barista or bartender...

That ENTIRE time, you're intaking information. Your mind is categorizing it into various sub-compartments -- true / false, possible / impossible, good / bad, right / wrong -- as fast as it can, so you can formulate a new opinion and feed it back into the conversation at the next possible opportunity.

No one wants to be left out of the information loop. No one wants to ONLY be a receiver; we want to be HEARD.

But when do you make time to THINK?

It (Didn't) Work[ed] in Guyana

I saw a documentary yesterday called Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. For those who don't know, Jim Jones was an evangelist with a powerful cult of personality. He mobilized over 2,000 people to leave their homes and families and come to live with him in his equal opportunity commune in the '60s and '70s, moving first to Redwood Valley, California, then to San Francisco.

When the going got tough -- and ex-members of the Peoples Temple started telling their stories of brainwashing and abuse to the media -- Jones mobilized his troops once again... to Guyana. Essentially overnight, he uprooted several hundred followers and left for a village he'd had built in a jungle in Guyana called Jonestown. There, the people lived in harmony, apart from the "real world"... even as suspicion of Jones's activities rose to a boiling point here in America, and family members of those who'd left began asking the government to get involved and help bring them home.

The part of the story most of us know is the "Kool-Aid." When Congressman Leo Ryan and a camera crew visited Jonestown in 1978, they were gunned down on the tarmac before they could bring the willing deserters home to America. Realizing his time was up, Jones insisted that it was better to "die in peace" than to live in oppression, and so he suggested / cajoled / ordered his followers to drink cyanide. Over 900 people, including children and infants, died -- voluntarily -- in one day.

The documentary is narrated by ex-members of the Peoples Temple, including a few survivors of that day in November -- the ones who suddenly realized none of it made sense.

As their stories reveal, Jones was able to maintain his sway over his followers through a potent mix of personality, sexuality, disinformation, sleep deprivation, guilt, fear and mandated ignorance. Temple members were encouraged to work up to 20 hours a day, were ridiculed if they slept or had intimate relations with others ( both of which were referred to as "selfish"), and were routinely chastised and beaten for transgressions.

But, because Jones convinced them that they could not leave because the world would never welcome them back, few of them attempted to.

In Jonestown, the only media that was permitted was Jones's own voice, which played on a loudspeaker throughout the village, 24 hours a day. No matter what time it was, you could hear "news updates" on the outside world from Jones. This helped cultivate a nonstop aura of paranoia and fear, that someone was always "out to get them."

In the end, the only one who was out to get them was Jones himself. And he did.

And yet... all of this could have been avoided if any of the Peoples Temple members had stopped and taken the time to think for themselves.

Evaluate the Data

Scientists don't jump to conclusions.

They formulate theories, conduct rigorous tests and base their conclusions upon the best evaluations of that data. If they didn't, we'd have laws and theories that could be disproven at the drop of a hat, and the world would still be in the Dark Ages.

There's a reason they're called the Dark Ages: it's because the concept of public knowledge was considered dangerous. The less the peple knew, the more easily they could be controlled.

Today, we have the opposite problem: there's so MUCH information available, we barely have time to make sense of it all before there's more to search through.

But endlessly absorbing information without taking due time to process and comprehend it -- to accept or reject it -- is almost as bad as having no information at all.

Don't get caught up in the information tidal wave. Grant yourself the right to take a break in the day -- several breaks, if needed -- and take a walk. Take a drive. Have a drink. Take a nap. Clean the garage.

Do whatever you need to do in order to allow your mind the time it needs to finish processing what you already know -- or what you think you know. You owe it to the world to put that information to its best possible use. More importantly, you owe it to yourself to understand where you're going and why.