Are you keeping things too private?
In today’s growing “social” world where websites like Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, Twitter, Wikipedia, and now Friendfeed all encourage this thing called “sharing”, should we be more focused on keeping things private or encourage sharing and the collaboration of minds?
One could argue that for startups, there is the need for privacy and to not let their “sacred ideas” get out before they get a chance to make something of it. So-called as going into stealth mode, founders try to keep as much as possible on the downlow until launch and boom from there. But this would also mean not getting other people’s view on things and being very selfish over things.
Recently I took my SAT and did pretty well (2330) so came the onslaught of “Ooh whatdya get’s?” from my friends. But no matter what I got I would have told them without embarrassment. Some of my friends on the other hand, refuse to reveal their elusive score in fear of criticism or who knows what. If they did bad, I would understand not telling the score and I instantly know it from the expression on their face so its ok.
But some cases, geniuses usually, choose not to say anything after “Ooh whatdya get?” probably in fear of competition. I know how their mind works, if they reveal what they got then I would know and if its better then I would take the test again and try to do better. Or if its worse then I can wallow inside on the sense that I did better. Or maybe they just don’t want to reveal how smart they are even though everyone probably knows they got a perfect score. Wrong, wrong and wrong, keeping it to themselves is just being selfish and conceited cause they don’t want others to do better themselves. In my case, I would never express any of the aforementioned reactions cause I honestly do want all my friends to do better and go to great colleges with me.
So I say embrace the idea of sharing and collaborating, the web sure has. Using tools like wiki’s makes things easier than ever. Of course you won’t want to reveal that super master plan for success to others but the basic ideas and concept should be out on the open market. A great example is Jessica Mah using a wiki last week to collaborate ideas for a speech she was presenting. She got the opinions of many others that crafted an even better speech.
I’m willing to bet the future will hold a lot more of this idea of sharing.
~Kevin Xu
Photo courtesy of photoai
