Nano Expressions?
I have been pondering on writing a post on User self-expression for quite some time now…only that I was not getting the right start. Finally I got it when this term ‘Nano Expression’ cropped up in my head ( and now I realize why I should have written this post before Auto Expo happened, however people who are on my G-talk would vouch that I had put the term up on my status message long before Mr Ratan Tata showcased his little marvel.)
The credit for getting this term in my head goes to Saarthak the RJ on Hit Radio here in Delhi and the usage of the term is for chat messengers and community websites.
The status messages present the best form of user self expression that one can think of. Ever since Gtalk and Yahoo etc. gave the functionality of writing a text status message in place of the standard; Available, Idle, busy etc, the users have become completely self expressive.
From displaying age old quotes, to announcing a new post on one’s blog, to wish friends on various occasions, to expressing what’s going on at the work place…people have been smart in using the space provided for status messages.
Taking the real thing forward, we all are now aware that Social networks are a raze and one of the biggest reason for it is that they give ample chance for User Self-expression.
The superiority of Facebook and Myspace has been debated a lot but Myspace has always been considered better because it lets the users have more control over their pages, giving it a freedom-loving personal appeal that continues to this day.
Friendster, never got that. But Facebook has now opened the floodgates to allow extreme user self-expression by making a lot of functionality changes and promoting widget and application inclusion by users.
There are a lot of features that one can put in this category that I call ‘Nano-Expressions’, for instant:
The Profile names and nick names
The Status messages
The Mood messages
The Profile Urls
The Scraps
The photo comments
Tags
Every one has a poet and a writer within us and given the slightest of chance, we express…that’s so good about us humans!!!
