Connected World of Cricket

Senantix


We witness empty stands.

Scattered applause of the precious few echo off the vast acres of vacant seats. Yet Test matches keep being scheduled on weekdays. The prices of the tickets remain ridiculously high, or are perhaps subsidised in some venues on second thought. The facilities for the spectators continue to be farcical, bordering on the insulting.

Which leads me to a perplexing thought: Are administrators really interested in the number of people who turn up for the matches?

The question, on careful scrutiny under the light of the current day, does not seem all that rhetorical.

In the modern times, we have seen electronic and digital communication play havoc with industries worldwide. The fibre optic cables have extended their far reaching tentacles, circumvented the old fashioned establishments one by one – choked them with communication channels that have flattened the earth and connected the Antipodes with the Alaskans at the rate of the instantaneous.

In such a world, are flesh and blood turnouts really important? Are they not just nice to have garnish around the extensive treasure troves that lie for the taking in the connected world?

There are indications of change every way one chooses to look or listen.

The music industry has been turned upside down in ways that have struck jarring chords. Companies dealing with mobile communications are now tuning themselves to the changing beats and leading the score, while the erstwhile behemoths are swaying to their own death knell in loss incurring music stores.

In the world of the fourth estate, newsprint now occupy the backseat as the power, potential and promise of the electronic media rewrite business plans. There is a very fine line now between bylines and blogs, and with the advent of the citizen journalist and fan-speak, with the consumer turning contributor, the news channels are engaging in a mad rush of introspection and innovation. The thud of the rolled up newspaper on the porch is now all but passé, with the world being downloaded without editorial censorship on seven inch laptop screens and even smaller smart phone handsets.

When we look at the publishing world, brick-and-mortar bookstores with limited shelf space and traditional publishers in their own smug, complacent ivory towers have been rocked and jolted by the advent of electronic readers. Amazon now sells many more Kindle versions than hard copies. Borders have disappeared from the map, and similar monopolising bookstores are fast following suit. Readers are growing increasingly used to packing their 3000 book libraries in handy featherweight six by four inch devices. Who needs crates of shop-soiled stuff shipped across the world to be pulped when inventory can be virtual – reproduced and delivered at the click of a button?

In such a world, does it really matter for organisers whether some paltry thousands turn up to watch the cricket in the giant stadiums?

Unlike in the 20th century, now the cricket watching delights are not restricted to the city hosting the match and its suburbs. Millions of viewers across the world tune in to watch on their television sets, interrupted by local advertisements after every over, wicket and pulled hamstring. Tens of thousands of office workers in cookie cutter cubicles click their way to follow each and every ball on the hundreds of cricket websites while banners ads blink away at the top of the screen and Bet365 beckons tantalisingly from the side pane.

The same millions watch and re-watch the action in their respective time zones, live or recorded as suitable, on the hundreds of television channels, streaming web sites and social media applications, after waiting a brief while for the mandatory advertisement to play itself to conclusion.

In light of all this, the sweet timing of the phenomenon of scheduling Test matches on week days synchronising with the launch of bcci.tv seems more than significant. Why target the insignificant thousands in the ground when one can easily capture the market of hundreds of millions across the World Wide Web? Ask yourself, on which days is it fairly certain that more people will follow the action on web sites streaming or reporting the match than live in the ground?

On one side lie the few thousands of prospective diehards, prepared to brave the baking sun and dirty pouches of water supplied at the grounds to catch the action live. On the other hand is the gateway to the infinite – a viewership unbounded by the archaic limitations of time and space, not checked by the turnstile even if they want to enter the virtual arena again and again ad infinitum.

It is the same reason why Harper Collins looks at capturing the Print on Demand market while pulping last year's bestsellers. This is why Sony ties up with Nokia and Apple creates more music applications for the iPhone. This is also why Rupert Murdoch enterprises are more interested in linking their sites to Facebook and Twitter than wooing local newspaper stores with expensive square feet of space.

Looking at it from the other point of view, it cannot be ruled out that maybe the fans of the day want to watch the matches in the comfort of their air-conditioned cubicles, listening to the expert commentary of a battery of celebrity ex-cricketers, sharing their own views in online discussion forums, updating their Facebook status and tweeting opinions with every major and not so major incident.

The times have changed. The audience is global and infinite across space and time. The local few are limited, and therefore, an eminently expendable fraction.

One may argue that a sport cannot exist without live spectators. However, we live in an era when books sell themselves without bookshops, newspapers are distributed without paper and music pours into the ears without being packaged into cassettes and compact discs.

Perhaps in today’s world, the empty stands reflect not the diminishing popularity of the sport, but the evolution of the cricket enthusiast to fit into the demands of the modern times, behind the digital cover of a connected world.

Social Net - Working Or Not?

by 
CrazyLazy

Social Networking is changing the entire world, at least at the present moment.


It is really amazing to witness how easy it has become to touch people digitally  - either by commenting on status messages or just by putting a thumbs up on their photos, videos or blogs. It’s simple, it’s quick and it’s free and hence addictive. It’s hip for teenagers in search of quick adult identity. It’s a wonderful buddy for a traveler who wants to reconnect to familiar circles transcending challenges of time zones.
It runs on the mobile phone allowing anybody to just press a button and share a personal moment. It also emulates a group discussion forum where all comments are made public to a group of friends and their friends and even further to friends’ friends. So an intelligent quip can draw a reaction in the form of a ‘like’ or a comment and it can cascade even further into a longish thread if the group-force desires to take it that far.
The language is free from any bar and can be interspersed with emoticons capturing any specific moods. If we like comparing this with that of emails and SMS then this is perhaps positioned in between. While email has to follow grammar and spelling and text messaging does not have to abide by any such rules but just exist as phonetically functional and economically zip-locked, the social networking language can range from copy-pasted anything to original writings.
So the disposition is pretty much open for a friendly interaction. Most popular amongst the social networking sites are Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and Twitter which have successfully diverted and transformed most of the email traffic from Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail to themselves. However the best part of sites like Facebook is that friends can be searched by names and ‘friend requests’ can be sent to strangers whose email addresses are not known. This is phenomenally exciting for teenagers, the twilight aged and even those in between who want to to search for friends and who  are avidly waiting to exchange gratifications, thereby exponentially increasing their friend lists.
But some statistics are really astonishing. Would we believe that more than 767,063 people like the profile of Paris Hilton for any other reason than just drooling at her photos? Likewise, it’s also true that some of the friend requests come to us with similar curiosities written all over.

 Virtually Yours …


This is changing the social behavior of people living in cities, who having gone through a phase of independent workaholic loneliness and boredom are now finding the appearance of red notifications on their Facebook dashboard caring and comforting. With the economy slowing down, the salaries getting cut, the increments becoming infinitesimally small and the superiors complaining far more than ever before, it is generally quite depressing to wade through each and every work week before finally reaching the shores of our planned weekend getaways. Such weekend consumption sprees are stimulating since those are supposed to be the best ways of getting entertained and also quickly prompting us to putting check-marks on our weekend planners. These check- marks are of immense value when we are in a circle of friends or colleagues in real life or in the surreal circle of Facebook friends.
A lot goes into our prior planning and online research in discovering those links which offer ‘more for less’, thus paying us back in pure currency- denominated satisfaction. But the check- marks do not end those stories. That job gets accomplished only after those getaway photos are shared on social networking sites amongst friends and their gratifying comments and likes are received against most of them. It is similar to a salesman sending a survey questionnaire to a buyer for rating a product or a service just sold and then waiting in expectation for a superlative feedback. And if that happens, then our joys shoot through the roofs, bringing in reassuring smiles and reaffirming our justifications of splurging on those very special getaways.
Also for others these become great references to start with their own weekend planning.
As opposed to persons with families, those are single and have been earlier glued to dating sites, have now gradually taken to one of these  social networking sites in search of authentic friendship which their old acquaintances or batch mates can perhaps provide, or just take to it for the sake of variety. Surprisingly for us this form of socializing has become a source of greater entertainment than even watching online flicks. We do not have to dress up for the real parties with friends nor plan for logistics. We just need to deck up our moods to the virtual party beats and glide into a wonderful few moments of comfort and bliss.
Also the face- time between friends and families are decreasing. Same holds true for our verbal communication and story telling skills. Every communication now seems to be filtered and condensed like carefully- worded advertisement punch-lines with goal-driven sales pitches. There was a brief period earlier when urban workforce spending long hours at offices regularly chose colleagues as relationship partners only to justify spending significant time of their relationships on the common convenient street, but of late those are slowly giving way to far greater choices panning a far larger virtual world.
Those who are in their teens today are hardly expected to marry or live with their colleagues. They will perhaps transcend all boundaries of states, nations, languages, religions, institutions and reach out with their hearts to whosoever will give full attention to their virtual identity. On the other hand a more mature group will try to seek their roots and their ties with their past, their families, their religions, their languages, their nations, their states and even their ethnicities. Both these pursuits will have immense passion, traction and excitement while embracing the unknowns. No wonder the erstwhile patrons of newspapers, weeklies and television are shifting their loyalties! Also much pronounced will be our gradually becoming fearlessly articulate in the virtual world and obnoxiously muted in the real one and as communications become asynchronous, more of our real slow analytical thoughts and even deeper introspections reflecting on what and how we eventually articulate. A day may not be far away when a teenager, who may feel shy in confronting a parent, will explain with effortless ease her action in status messages on Facebook, because a virtual medium does not have the ego, ethos, prejudices and hierarchies like real- life individuals.


Must be the next big thing …




The business, currently in need of some steroid shots, has pinned all its hopes on social networking to be the vehicle which will drive industrial revenues in the next few years. It promises to simulate the entire world market on the social networking sites, put gaming console like dashboards on top for the industry captains to monitor and play with, to accelerate the growth of revenues for all industries and finally deliver a panacea for the world which has been thoroughly shaken by the global financial crisis. Does it sound like wishful thinking? Maybe or maybe not. But the truth is that the businesses definitely want it to succeed and deliver on each of the promises. The businesses themselves are prepared to change the way they work currently.  They now predict the demand by analyzing their consumer buying behaviors using Customer Relationship Management systems. Well, these systems can only track buying patterns of existing customers but cannot capture the details for potential future ones. And the latter is far greater in numbers than the former. With social networking, their ambitious plan is to integrate current customers, share profiles in social networking groups, through the friends and their friends’ friends and hence capture data of the future customers. Further they may like to integrate their customer loyalty programs with incentives and reward points for referrals and direct orders from friends who are in their current friend- list. Also social networking sites can be a very reliable places for capturing feedback from friends on products and services sold to them which otherwise are done by sending survey questionnaires. This new approach can provide a much more direct way for business to communicate with their current  and as well as prospective customers and can result in greater customer-satisfaction and probably higher revenues.
Similarly, procurement and recruitment functions can also become more optimized and cheaper as the social networking market grows bigger. After-sales  support can have faster responses and can cost less at the same time if issues are discussed and resolved amongst the customers who are 'friends'.
The businesses are also sensitive of the changing social preferences. They are aware that the consumers, especially the youths, are shifting their attention away from print and electronic media to  more online means and even more to mobile telephony. So their new campaigns have targeted these new-age media. In fact, currently more than 50% social- networking users access it from their mobile phones.
Also the technological advancements, open economies, liberal trade regulations and finally the change in social behaviors of the people have encouraged them to embark upon a humongous plan. They are also aware of the convergence of service providers - for example, internet, wired and wireless telephone, broadband and television which will help the entire initiative.


Economy and politics are inter-connected and hence it may be possible that by implementing social networking, globally large corporations will try to fulfill some of their political agendas as well. Since this is a powerful propaganda-machine, it can be used by government departments, agencies, institutions, and social activists to raise popular support on serious issues as has been in the upheavals in the North African countries and the Middle- East. Though the social- networking throughput is intended for loading sponsor pages with streaming videos and for discussion forums on various merchandise (with the intention introducing direct marketing through friend-chisees and peer-to-peer product support by shopping-friendly mates), the idle bandwidth will still have enough for some free propaganda.


Also post- 9/11, governments have been spending heavily on homeland security, on profiling people, on monitoring mobile calls and on  tracking various financial transactions. Social- networking sites may also fall in line with that agenda. In future, analytics software can start monitoring people like laboratory animals! Privacy, which still remains a dodgy area, can be superficially protective from casual onlookers – however, if somebody needs to really prey into private data, that might not be prevented at all. So users must exercise some restraint in the beginning and also bear in mind the consequences of  misuse. Though privacy and security may not be the same, here we somehow have security preying into privacy. From security perspective a naked man threatens none though from privacy perspective it can still send signals to other perverts.

Before we discuss more on this, let us move to another topic. Here we study the different roles and interactions of entities which comprise the private business enterprise circus and how they all are delicately connected by strings. This will also set the context and throw some ideas about how people will be impacted if this grand plan is implemented like their dream.

Fortunes will differ by Types …


All the people, who we discussed about earlier as friends in social networking, play their role as real-life consumers with varying needs and buying capacities. Let us try to categorize these friends into types.
First are those who in addition, play very important roles as the workforce for business in its various functions like marketing, procurement, production and support services. Let us call them Type I.
Next are kids, teens and young adults who are still students and some of them may have part- time jobs (belong to the age group between 0 - 21 years). Let us call them Type II.
Following in the wakeare the large business owners (Type III) and home makers (Type IV).
Let the small business owners be also classified as Type I.
Assume the self- employed like doctors, lawyers, authors, artists, actors be either Type I or Type III depending on whether they have mediocre earnings or really astronomical ones as celebrities in their respective professions.
There could still be another group of retired individuals who have steady earnings from their past investments in debt instruments or stocks and also from gifts / remittances from children or kin. Let us call them Type V. The following illustrations refer to a few numbers more for helping us to compare qualitatively the income and spending ratios for various types at a rough order of magnitude rather than actually letting us worry about the accuracy of those, which is more of a quantitative exercise and bear no relevance to this discussion.
One, which Type consumes how much? Currently more than 50% of the global consumption for goods and services is by Type II. If we look at the Type IV consumers, mostly women, they consume another 20%. For Type V (considering an aging world population) even a conservative estimate will put that as 10%.
Two, which Type borrows money and pays maximum interest? Globally speaking almost all of Type II who are above 16 years are perhaps in debt. Debt to income ratio or DTI is currently between 0.6 (for Type I) and 0.8 (for Type II, Type V and also for some Type I who are temporarily out of jobs) and in future these ratios are slated to head further north.
Three, which Types are the maximum beneficiaries of business profit? 50% of the world’s profit from private enterprises are earned by 5% people mainly Type III (i.e. large entrepreneurs, private equity owners, investment bankers and CXOs of multinational corporations). Type III comprise mostly of aged bums who seldom support their families (other Type II and Type IV) but like to roam as free discretionary birds looking for ambitious nymphs.
Four, what’re the most pathetic of Types? They are Type I. They are themselves moderate consumers (for example they spend on houses, cars, vacations and debt servicing) but also essentially provide for all their children’s conspicuous needs, education, hi-tech and high octane life styles and their credit card debts (Type II). They may also support Type IV (both if divorced or not) and sometimes Type V (though in western societies those are usually loners). Also, they earn much less compared to the high profits which the Type III earn for themselves (25% - 40% or sometimes quite absurdly high).
A much publicized answer in defense for such high profits is that Type III have the ability to absorb high risks (can absorb losses in revenue and pay penalties in the event of T&C breaches or pay damages when a lawsuit is lost) while for Type I that risk-taking ability is almost nil. The latter, it is argued, are unable to sustain even the slightest irregularities in their incomes and will perhaps break downon hearing of possible pay cuts. But counter arguments could also be that these employees had earned their degrees and diplomas with their own money or by borrowing it while taking the entire risks on themselves. Besides, they constantly bear the risks of losing their jobs at any moment when their performances really dip or their employer desires to lay them off by contriving a verdict from the annual evaluation process. Finally, after 2008, Type I have actually taken pay cuts when the actual quarterly revenues did not meet the ambitious growth targets which somehow are always set at 10% or its multiples but never at anything like 3.79% or 9.07%.  So why should Type I not be considered as risk takers even with their current statuses? Also in the event of losses, Type III not only take recourse to government tax shields and concessions (or bail out packages) but also use contingencies that are already built into their products and services costs as immediate shock absorbers. Besides, their bonuses (which are guaranteed sums per signed contracts) never get slashed even when the revenue targets are not met or the company reports a loss. Their money is always stowed away in offshore funds which are managed by the best fund-managers, thereby hardly allowing that corpus-value to erode. In fact Type III’s corpus only grows and that too at a very rapid rate. They never get poorer whereas Type I does get fleeced in several permutations and combinations.
Let us now look at another possibility of crediting Type III more than Type I with their actual performances on their respective job roles so that we can justify such skewed sharing of payouts. Type I engaged in manufacturing and construction industries are mostly of entry-level employees as well as a few experienced middle-level employees with even less, say 1%, senior level employees. Type I in services industries are also mostly from entry- level with a few supervisors and 1-2 managers. They have set targets and they handle the entire sales and delivery of goods and also provide support services to customers. CXOs are there as the budget approvers and the signatories of all contracts. They attend lunch and dinner meetings with high- profile customers and deliver key- note addresses at town- hall meetings once every quarter. They spend paid vacation with families or partners or significant others. They do not have any downside risks other than being asked to walk out of the job carrying a hefty severance package. All creditors are liabilities to the enterprise but not a single one of them are tied to CXO’s personal assets. For those who are owners amongst Type III, can choose to file under bankruptcy law after transferring all personal assets to other family members or to fictitious accounts. Comparisons of their risk- taking abilities and that of their performances have both failed to clearly justify the reason for such a disproportionate distribution of their incomes. So we can infer that payouts are decided by pure rolling of the dice or luck and most other arguments are fluff.




Now let us examine the quandary of Type I. As employees, they are given targets to stoke the consumerist spirits in potential buyers which also include their own children, spouse and dependants. On the other hand, as consumers, when Type I purchase those products on their credit cards they add up to their liabilities. And quite amusingly, the incentives and bonuses are designed with such clinical delight that Type I can earn those additional perks only to pay for their additional debts on their credit cards or can relinquish those incentives only to see that the debt burdens too got equally reduced. However the only advantages of taking those incentives are seeing the happy faces of their spouses and children with more regularity. That experience is indeed priceless.




What will happen to people by Types if social networking is implemented as the business desires? Type II and Type IV will step on their consumption accelerators with their sights only on the promised future while dreaming that one day Type II will become self employed Type III and Type IV will become the entrepreneur Type I or even the entrepreneur Type III. The harsh realities of the debt traps will perhaps evade their dreamy eyes. If at all there will be somebody to bother about that debt then it could be Type I. But nobody else will care about Type I, since they are such pathetically cautious consumers! And even Type I themselves will de-skin that status when they step into the shoes of enterprise managers! They have to set their eyes on their targets and that’s what they must achieve or else they will be tagged as worse performers, gagged out of their jobs. Social networking will bring in far greater competition amongst Type I workforce for the same jobs. Other small suppliers who are Type I may also join the same race by quoting lower prices. Type I entrepreneurs may even switch roles temporarily with a Type I workers. Again, every year, some Type II will graduate as Type I workforce and compete with the current lot at a much cheaper level. Eventually Type I will be cut from both ends, their expenditures will rise, job security will become low and incomes will shrink!
Let us look at Type V. They will probably pay handsomely for either feeling healthier or looking younger and for goods delivered at their homes (especially medication and homecare). They will have limited buying capacities, almost nil debt-servicing and no financial support from others.
Finally let us look at Type III. Their incomes and bonuses can increase even more since, in the new scenario, the business will achieve far greater revenues as well as profits than their current levels. They are really keen in seeing social networking succeed in a big way as they have envisioned, which will probably catapult them to the safe havens of oligarchy.






People can start behaving bizarrely …

Orchestration is far more difficult in real life than in theory especially when the people involved are politically and demographically disparate. Their propaganda of ‘smart’ and ‘intelligent’ cities which are in their quintquessential vision statements and roadmaps, rely heavily on social- networking sites to capture and analyze millions of consumer data and translate those into orders. However their party can be spoiled if certain assumptions do not become true.
One, all the analytics which is promised by the technology gurus may not be delivered. The verbal commentaries, one of the most difficult things to be analyzed digitally, could pose serious challenges. And the industries may not buy this beta-version of the ‘panacea’. There may not be a single corporate success story to ride on.
Two, in spite of the industries buying them, their revenues may not increase. The social- networking friends may not buy that many or that often, as had been expected by business. They may ‘like’ yet may not have enough money to buy those. Or their social identities may be fake and may not yield any orders.
Three, the rise of the oligarchs may be opposed by the commoners with whistle blowers like WikiLeaks and other sting operators, within various financial and government agencies, making public some of their confidential and sensitive documents. Hence those friends can turn into real foes.
Four, the disposition of teenagers can suddenly change and they can start to vehemently oppose the gradual transformation of democracies into plutocracies. Unemployment problems may become almost impossible to solve by current government policies.
Five, there may be a revival of interest in art, culture and yoga and people can start rejecting war in every form and also the pretexts that their governments may keep on citing to convince them.
Six, people can start acting ‘unsmart’, drive less cars and use less mobile phones, grow organic crops and return to living simple lives in villages. This may sound too extreme to actually happen but we have never had the opportunity to see the interactions and reactions of such huge numbers of educated people (Facebook alone currently has almost 7% of the world population as its users) connected in real time on a single social platform!


How can they alter the planned outcomes envisioned by business?
One thing for certain is that Type III profits will come down considerably.
Type I may see an upsurge of small entrepreneurs.
Type II, and this can be the real difference from the current trend, will also start earning early as small entrepreneurs Type I (they could choose professions as small organic farmers, manufacturers, teachers, tourist guides, therapists, nurses, social welfare workers, zoo keepers, horticulturists, energy producers from non-conventional sources, manufacturers of eco-friendly automobiles etc. They may join politics too). Their debt burdens may slowly reduce and they may leave hedonism and embrace discipline in their lives.
Type IV may become Type I and join the workforce.
Type III may find women to be more efficient and loyal than their counterparts.
Type V may start thinking about themselves as more capable than just fending for their medical and home- care expenses which can become cheaper because of lower margins being charged on price. More importantly, they can reduce their debt too  and that can perhaps bring back some of those who had earlier deserted them.
Finally our Type I cavaliers would feel much less pressure both from their families as well as their employers. Their debt- serving burden in all likelihood will be lower and their revenue targets at the workplace will definitely be less steep than before, hence, allowing them some opportunities to smile and enjoy life at large :-)






So what’s the conclusion? …




What are the chances of social networking being the socio-economic panacea of twenty-first century?
Frankly speaking, if anyone of us knew the answer, he would have already become a billionaire. In fact, some people think the other way round. Those who have already become billionaires think that they have found out the panacea and it is a matter of time for them to be proven right. We need to wait and see what happens finally! It is a crazy world we live in today and those who are really keen in hitting the bull’s eye must go and see an astrologer or a statistician, and I would rather enjoy life than try to gaze at in the crystal- ball and predict the future of thee world;  its politics and economics which are more complex than the theories which many of the stalwarts in business are hurriedly trying to force-fit.


So what may be the future of social networking?
It has already involved a huge investment to create this infrastructure and even though it is valued at several billions of  dollars, but  it can either succeed or  plummet drastically down if the industries fail to get inebriated enough by its magic.  Business is going hammer-and-tongs with its orchestrated epistemic shots but whether it can cure the global financial crisis nobody can tell. On the social side, regardless of the success or failure, the real friends will eventually be lost for free, similar to the way they were locked into this virtual friendship.


What can remain as a part of it will be the direct marketing chains, loyalists earning reward points or real incentives for references or for solving product support issues. And those people who will be marginalized by analytics will move on from one free online resource to the next one.

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As the article demonstrates, CrazyLazy is a gifted analyst of society.  

Whenever he sees himself on the side of majority he feels it’s time to start worrying... He does not relish having high hopes about life as long as there is at least one to live with ... He believes that honesty still has its place in people's mind ...now and even later.

Friend Feed Overload

by 

Anuranjan Roy

I almost quit Facebook yesterday. I really did seriously consider it. No, not because I am among the unfortunate few whose mom is on FB and have to deal with questions like "Who is that?" or worser still "What is that?" on every picture or comment posted. That's a pain I have learnt to live with in this, the information age. I like getting on to Facebook and Orkut too much to really quit it whole-sale. Commenting and album surfing are too much of a fun activity to give up completely. The only reason the thought ran across my head was that I came online on Yahoo Messenger after many years and ran into a very rare kind of friend.

Rare because this buddy of mine is not on any of the social networks be it Orkut or Facebook or any of the others (Are there any left alive?). Back in the day, he mistakenly signed up for Yahoo and that's where he remains. One of my closest friends, we had spent the majority of our school life as part of our regular crew of pals hanging out, playing terrace cricket, early morning cycle races, pre-tuition post-tuition video gaming and all those wonderful things that only kids can get away with. Growing up sucks (Boo hoo) but that's a different issue and here I will get back to the topic. It was so awesome to get in touch with him again. Where are you, what are you up to, how's the old hometown, remember how we used to sneak past the stadium security guards to religiously play our game of evening cricket, you went to the US?, you bought a Pulsar - hey me too, mine's red! - all questions and answers put forward with an intention of actually listening and filling in the gaps. Waves of nostalgia and a uber cool buddy-buddy feeling swamped us both.

As opposed to if he were on FB. Every week or so, his face would pop on my news-feed or if he were as hyperactive as me, he would pop up daily! I would know where he was, how he was and all those details without ever having to talk to him as in virtual terms he'd be shouting about it from the rooftops. When I'd talk to him, there wasn't much to talk about now because "Hey, I went to the US!" would be met with "I know... (those pictures you uploaded stayed on my home page forever)", "Hey! I bought a red Pulsar" would be replied by "Yeah, I saw your status message...(and the 10000 comments that followed below it)" So boring, so meaningless would be our conversation since there wasn't anything to really learn and laugh about. 

Facebook, Orkut and their brothers have driven a real thrill out of our lives. To bump into somebody from our past in a foreign city, to jump up in joy and to negotiate the stream of questions from both ends - all that is unfortunately something that happened to people in the past. Now that someone is a friend, he/she stays on your life's home page and within easy contact forever. Forever in this case is boring because it is just too much information. Almost everything you wanted to know or did not want to know is on public display. Sometimes a long separation is necessary to make the old connections even stronger. In an ironical twist, this post is going onto my FB status, but I was tempted, really tempted yesterday to get the mystery and adventure of not knowing back into my life.

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Anuranjan Roy is a regular contributor to Scroll. He blogs at http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com

Poll Results

Scroll asked its readers and their extended audience to answer the following question:


Does Social Media make it easier to track down dissidents?


The answers are in and shown as percentage figures below:

Majority of the responses have voiced the same concerns and guarded optimism portrayed in the articles of this issue.


Thanks to all the readers for their participation.

FaceBook FaceOff

by 

Ed Yojus

The quaint little group had assembled in one of the sports bars tucked away somewhere nondescript in the Zurich Old Town. People of varied nationalities and professions, but all of us were united by the common love for sports, beer, and a few more other things under the Sun.

On the television screens , a not so engrossing football match in the under 21 Euro Cup was being beamed. Still, all the tables in the bar were taken, and the pretty barmaid was clocking 100% efficiency as she poured out the drinks like a conjuror performing her trick.

"Darned weather this, always cloudy and raining. I hardly felt like going to work today!" exclaimed Murray, the Irishman who worked for a software behemoth. "I specifically left Ireland to get rid of this gloom."

"It has obviously followed you here," I said, "It was much better last year."

"I bet you made a status update on the weather in your FaceBook account," teased Sylvia, the attractive Swiss girl who taught the rest of us A3 level German language.

"Well no, I don't use FB that much, though there is this colleague of mine for whom life apparently happens between status updates! His updates are like:

            'Just had breakfast'

            'Considering going to work'

            'Car tyre is flat'

            'Got locked in the garage (sent via e-Mobile)'

"Did that status message get him rescued from the garage?" asked Christoph, half English half Swiss, teacher, tennis player, surfer… The rest of us came from different "walks" of life, he was definitely from a "run".

"No he just hollered till his wife came with the spare keys."

"I don’t have a FB account, and am glad not to have one," said Sylvia, "I certainly don’t understand what this fuss about FB is anyway, though I agree it is rather popular. My grandmother has an FB account, though she lives the life of a recluse, not really interested in knowing anything that goes on in the world."

“Great! And how then did she get to know of FB?” I asked.

“She used to attend this ‘reclusive club’ for the elderly where all the others convinced her to open an account.”

“Hang on now! How the dickens can someone be reclusive if she were socializing in a club and chatting to them all the time over FB?” I exclaimed, surprised.

“Well, though all of them were on FB, they were just passive readers. They hardly ever made any updates. And anyway, grandma got tired of this non-reclusive stuff in a ‘reclusive club’ and hence dropped out after a while.”

“Ah thank you, that helps, wow! Some club that!!” remarked Murray.

"My story is only slightly different from Sylvia," said Christoph. "It was the loss of a bet that caused me to open a FB account., but I don’t use it much."

"Hey that’s new," remarked Boris, the Russian insurance agent. "Do tell us more about it."

"It was like this. One day one of my colleagues asked me if she could add me as a friend in FB, and I told her that I did not have a FB account. She goggled at me for two seconds, and then said that I couldn’t be serious.

"I told her that it was true, so she asked me to get an account. I told her that I saw no reason why I should, and to that she said that everyone else saw the reason. So in a moment's folly I made this bet with her that if she could find hundred people who felt that I should be on FB before the week was over, I would open up a FB account.

"She just put up a question on FB 'Should Christoph have a FB account?', and soon a hundred perfect strangers had voted a resounding yes even before forty-eight hours! So, I lost and had to open the account!"

We laughed till we almost spilled our beer on each other, and then Boris remarked, "You are right about the strangers part of it. I have about two hundred and fifty friends on Facebook, of which I don’t even two hundred, and won't recognize forty of the rest if they were to suddenly walk up to me. There are also a few other "friends" whom I would like to punch in the face if I meet them. That leaves about seven real friends with whom I talk regularly."

"I also have around two hundred friends on FB, but only because I used to play FarmVille avidly once," I said, "But not anymore."

"Why don’t you play any more?" asked Murray.

"Oh I was only interested in the Christmas gifts, and once I had opened them all, I lost interest in the game."

“How about the next Christmas? You would have got gifts for the next Christmas too,” said Boris.

“It would have been quite a pain to keep playing for another twelve months for the next Christmas!”

"Don’t you think that you guys all speak of FB as though you are apologetic that you have an account in there?" asked Sylvia.

"Well, there is no doubt it can be a royal nuisance," said Christoph.

"Yes, everyone wants to be your friend; the status messages just don’t stop coming, things can get rather trying," said Boris.

"Is that all that people do on FB?" asked Sylvia, “Sounds like a pretty stupid place after all.”

"Oh no, there is actually a lot that you can do in there. You can setup polls, like the one that did Christoph in; you can share photographs and videos, or interesting links; or you can show that you "like" something… it might be someone's comment, a social cause, someone's photograph, etc." Murray explained.

"Yes, there can be lofty causes, like environmentalist groups located in Atacama desert campaigning about saving Beluga whales, and I can "like" the campaign and demonstrate my support for the endeavour," I said.

"I once poked forty people within an hour," remarked Christoph.

“And you also find some quick wit here and there,” I said, “People do put up interesting status messages, like, ‘Insert coin to view my status message.’ “

“He must have become a pretty rich guy!” exclaimed Murray.

“Well, no doubt he must have posted some status messages on how rich he finally became, but since I never inserted any coins, I never learnt that!” I said.

As the laughter died down, one could see that something serious was still writ on Sylvia's beautiful mind.

"There seems to be a lot of intrusion into a person's privacy. Wasn’t there an uproar recently that too much personal data of the users was being collected and used without their permission?"

"That debate will always go on," exclaimed Boris. "If you have a 'social network' where you are interested in letting every moment of your life and your opinions known to others and vice versa, the line between private and social becomes rather thin."

"Apparently FB was also collecting some data from their users clandestinely, but they claimed that it was to customize content suited to the tastes of individual users. All for a good cause," I said.

"Of course FB said that any user could control all that through their privacy settings," said Murray.

"Somehow the damned privacy settings never work for me," complained Christoph, "Every time I try to make it deucedly difficult for someone to send a  friend request across,  it never works! I am so flooded with so many requests that could do with an Ark!"

"I have this uncanny feeling that the privacy settings are never on the same page the next time I try to access them!" remarked Murray.

"I don’t go into the trouble of finding out where they are hidden," said Boris. "I normally wait for a visit from my ten year old nephew, that fellow always knows where to find them."

"Could you please send him over to my place the next time? That would be a really great help!" quipped Christoph.

“Great idea. I think the next time your nephew comes over, he can pay all of us a visit, except for Sylvia,” I said. And the idea met with enthusiastic approval from all others.

“Ok guys, that was a wonderful conversation! I need to push off now, got an early day at work tomorrow,” said Boris, rising.

“Yeah yeah, why don’t you just say that you gotta make a status update about the football match?” joked Murray.

“Well I guess we should all call it a day, same place, same time, next weeweek,” said Christoph.

We left in ones and twos. I marvelled at the fact that astonishingly here was a group of five whom Facebook had failed to woo even with her considerable charms. All along I had the idea that it would take a talented search party from Scotland Yard to be able to find a single person except me who wasn’t enamoured by it.. But that evening, I knew I was no longer alone, and the burden of not devoting myself fully to FaceBook was lifted off my soul. With a contented smile and head held high, I walked off into the rainy night.

Ed Yojus is one of the new breed of socially networked populace who can effortlessly switch between content producer and content consumer. However, as the article suggests, his social networks develop more in old fashioned bars than the new world of clicks.