A few facts before I begin:
- Facebook is worth over US $11 billion.
- Farmville and Mafia Wars game maker Zynga Games Network Inc is worth US$ 3.3 billion.
- Disney acquires Club Penguin for $ 700 million.
- Electronic Arts buys PlayFish for US$ 400 million.
Most of us are familiar with online games like Farmville, Playfish, Mafia Wars. Some of us are even hooked to some of them in spite of ourselves, although we don't acknowledge it!
I have mentioned some facts above which would have definitely given you the creeps.
I was watching an amazing video on by Professor Jesse Schell called ‘Beyond Facebook'. It opened my eyes and I am sure you will be blown as well. Some of you may have watched this video as it's pretty popular on internet.
The bottom line is how do we spend our time on the internet? Or how MUCH time we spend on the internet or social networoking sites. Or how much time do we waste! But thats another story…and a pretty long one! Some other time?
Can we get out of our addiction of Farmville and Mafia Wars on our own or let it pull us into its virtual world which is very enticing and takes us away on a fairytale ride totally different than real life. We can forget our everyday troubles for a while (read: hours) and ‘enjoy' ourselves till we doze off.
Now lets talk about social networking sites, without the gaming part.
Yes, we should have a large network of friends, colleagues or people who you want to keep in touch. Its all about networking and increasing your brand image. The brand called YOU!
Yes, you should tell people what you have been up to, to an extent. But you never know who your ‘friends' are. Because on FB you usually ‘add' or ‘confirm' people you have just met and may not want to share details of your whereabouts with them all the time.
Too much of anything is BAD. And it couldn't be emphasized more. I have seen people being addicted to the extent of updating their status before or after doing things that I'd rather NOT talk about. You get my point? Read this /~r/SandersSays/~3/IStMivhtmDw/why-i-no-longer-do-realtime-trip-updates.html" post by Tim Sanders who has a different perspective on real time updates . But I think this is a personal issue and I'd not like to comment on it too much.
Another important issue for all of us is TIME. All of us say we don't have time for this and time for that, yet most of us spend a sizable portion of our personal (and sometimes professional) time on a lot of things that we'd rather not. FB, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. should be given some time but they should NOT be treated as if your life depended on them.
What happened to our dreams? Aspirations? Goals? That course we always wanted to take? That instument that we wanted to learn? Learn salsa? All gone down the drain? Just because we decide to 'spend' our time on .....
Sorry, if I have been a little harsh on some, but this is what I think and I could be totally WRONG!
Some of you might be wondering about me. Yes, it SEEMS that I am online all the time. But nothing could be farther from the truth. I hardly give 30-45 minutes a day to FB, Twitter and my blog combined, but it LOOKS as though I am always online!
How do I do it? Will write about it some other time..
Hope this mixture of facts and advice helped.
Dream big dreams,
Shoot for the moon!
Have an extraordinary life!
Nuruddin Abjani
