P2P name dropping

Rohit Bhargava calls it “egommunication”, and defines that as a form of communication where you can share a message or piece of content with someone based on their own consistent habit of checking mentions of themselves and their content online.

It’s an insightful post about how to reach the otherwise unreachable. But I think we move off an important base when we label a form of listening with “ego” or “vanity”. Listening for one’s name is something we all do naturally, all the time. It’s the way our brains are wired, by necessity. Online we have to do it manually, by setting up a feed of searches for our names, along with other subjects that interest us.

This is not to say that ego and vanity play no role in communications of all kinds. Just that listening to hear one’s name dropped, or called, is not by nature an egotistical activity.

Speaking of dropping (or its opposite), that’s Rohit on the left in this photo, with the big camera. I’m there on the right, farther back, also floating in the air of a 727 treating its occupants to zero G-force. I think by this time my own little camera had floated away.



3 responses to “P2P name dropping”

  1. Hi Doc,

    I agree with you but I think the word “ego” often gets a bad rap. Much like the idea of us all naturally listening for our names, I think ego is something that we all naturally have … it is only when we let it consume us that we become egotistical. To me, the idea of egommunication is based on this principle that we have the tools to virtually pay attention to when people mention us or our thoughts. In that sense, it is meant to be a much more positive concept based on something we all do.

  2. Doc,
    It works for me… the best way to get a message to someone you don’t know is to link to one of their web posts, or something they care about.

    Email used to be viable, but it’s rapidly becoming overworked due to the numerous tasks it gets used for, and is also being filtered to death. It’s a double-whammy.

    The one exception is the odd existence of Robert Scoble’s phone number in my cell phone… which I used once, and probably never will again.

    Communications in the age of the Live Web is getting very interesting. I think eventually we’ll link blogs, twitter, flickr, and everything else into personal newsgroups… and the circle back to usenet will be complete.

    –Mike–

  3. […] that I have read these exact same thoughts somewhere else before, and I have found it. In July Doc Searls responded on a similar call via a blog by Rohit Bhargava. Rohit has also seen and acknowledged this trend and […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *