Jun 12 2009
it’s time to get online
These days if you are not online, you are definitely out of the game – meaning, you are pretty much out of the real world. Ironic isn’t it, since one would think the world we live in is the real world and the other the virtual world. But I think the lines have blurred and the real world, is really in between – one that has us living partly online and partly offline.
Think about it for a moment, where do most of us go to search for anything? The internet has become our yellow pages, our encyclopedia, our dictionary…I could go on, but in short, it’s our window to the world both literally and metaphorically.
On Tuesday, we had a chat with Scott Goodstein on the show and he is one of the guys who helped run Barack Obama’s online presidential campaign. And we all know how Obama’s presence online really gave him an edge over John McCain. It was new school vs old school and new school won big time. The difference he said, was that Obama was the one who wanted to get “online” so instead of just having a passive presence online, it became an active tool to engage people. And boy, did it work!
I am somewhere in the middle in terms of my “online-ness”. I’ve got this blog, I’m on facebook and I did register for twitter but I have yet to really get into it. The blog is fine because it’s still very much about writing which I like. Facebook is fun and great for connecting with old friends (plus the additional voyeuristic reward of knowing about other people’s lives). Twitter – well, I can’t find it’s appeal or maybe it’s just that I still want to have some semblance of a private life.
But I can see the benefits of this for politicans. A quick check of Obama’s facebook account (of which he has many) and he’s got over 6 million fans on just one of them! One post there and he instantly reaches 6 million people. And these are not just 6 million random people, these are 6 million who want to know what you are doing, who are already “fans”. That means your message definitely gets heard. Now what other media out there can guarantee you such an audience.
Singapore is slowly opening up to this idea of politics online. The government is concerned because they know there is no way to truly control it and they also can’t prevent it. So it’s either join them or ban them, the latter losing you votes along the way of course and being unrealistic (how do you ban the internet?)
It doesn’t have to be such a scary thing though. For a long time I had stayed off blogging, but now that I’ve got the hang of it, I actually quite enjoy the experience and recognise the usefulness of such a tool. I also used to think you could not control what comes out on the internet and now I know it’s true. The difference is that I now understand that people are able to discern between what is meaningful and what is rubbish. So it doesn’t matter so much that rubbish gets written because it’s doesn’t get an audience. People only listen to those who don’t talk rubbish. So there isn’t a need to fear the medium, but there is a need to embrace it and to learn how to use it to your advantage.
The way I see it, for the next elections in Singapore, it is the contender who is media savvy that will have the ultimate edge. Politics is a game and being a good person with a good heart is only half the battle won. So isn’t it time you got fully connected?
