How do we measure for what makes somebody a “somebody”? Years ago, being somebody meant you had your name in the phone book, which meant you had a phone in your name. Today, we have lost a common measure of what it takes to be a “somebody”.
The standards are now based on the individual, their surrounding, their social circle, short and long term goals and for some, pay.
Being in the phone book was followed on with owning a cell phone or owning a dot-com then onto having a Web site about you. Along the way though, the path forked and now the many options means people have to set their own personal standards which could include being unique and able to stand out.
A year ago, we saw how being Somebody involved getting huge number of friends on Twitter. What does someone do with all of those followers? Are they just quantity or quality? Is the list made up of people who just follow who is popular but never actually have the time to ready through the hundreds of people they ‘follow’?
On one of the new social photo systems, I noticed one person that we getting more and more followers, largely due to their photos always showing up in the ‘Popular’ area. Their pictures where across such a variety that they had something for everyone. I started to think that the images where not actually being taken by the person. It started looking a lot like the sites that feed Twitter automatically just to get hits.
Then came a image of a note stating that the person had to stop posting pictures for a while because their iPhone was broken. Someone commented that the images uploaded by this individual were too important to not have any more so why doesn’t everyone chip in to buy them a new iPhone… it went from there. Genius… I wont get into if it was all a plan or not. But, it does show how creative people are getting by being a ‘somebody’.
Being somebody in the social world, if your popular in the quality crowd, you can get creative with how to turn that into of value to a business.
On the other side of being a ‘somebody’ is the person who isn’t after the masses. They are a somebody because they always deliver… working as a team member for the success of everyone. They never assign their name to the success of a project. They promote it as a team effort since they don’t see the need to be ‘somebody’. Their internal pride makes them a ‘somebody’ to themselves. They don’t need to feed off of being fingered by the masses. Generally, I have found this is driven early in their lives by parents telling kids they were proud in them. This is carried forward in life where the kids as adults know that their performance is recognized without the need to brag.