This morning I came across a post by Fred Wilson. Fred’s a venture capitalist in New York City, and while we sometimes see things exactly the same way, this morning was not one of those times.
Fred was bemoaning a problem he’s been having lately: like me, he writes his thoughts out in public (to a much larger audience, by the way), and he’s noticed that he needs to edit those thoughts somewhere between his head and his fingers.
His problem is that it feels to him as though that self-editing gets in the way of his belief in transparency.
What Fred said sounded so conflicted it honestly made me feel for him. Seriously. A little twang deep in my soul. I got it. I then suggested that Fred get over himself.
Verboria and transparency aren’t the same thing.
I agree with the idea of transparency, and I suspect that underneath whatever filters we each bring to the conversation organically Fred Wilson and I would find that our feelings and opinions on that subject are exactly identical.
But without editing, self-imposed or otherwise, your words would just be noise. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how successful, popular or anything. Pure noise. You don’t want to be a noise maker. Embrace the issue: self-editing is fine.
My partners and I at The Facelift (thus far looking like the unlaunched service that it is if you happen over there) are struggling with this. On the one hand we believe that a social network needs context. On the other, editing is hard. Not “oh man, that’s hard”, but by nature when you edit you presume that you know how to present your words in a particular context and that you’ve figured out what the right context is to begin with. AND it’s expensive.
A Social Network, whether it’s ad-hoc like the group of people who gather at AVC.COM to digest and comment on the words of “Fred Wilson, Smart and Successful NYC VC”, or designed, like The Facelift, needs context, or there’s ultimately nothing really social at all; it’s just a bizarre with so much noise you can’t hear or find anything.
Go ahead . . . self-edit. You’ll like the results.
