norton, brian

This week there have been a ton of great links on Twitter that I want to discuss, but I figured it would be appropriate to start with this great Harvard Business Review blog post by Alexandra Samuel: 10 Reasons to Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life. You can follow Alexandra on Twitter @awsamuel and check out her website. She is the Director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University and the co-founder of Social Signal.

Ok, now to the real task at hand: her blog post. She did a wonderful job of laying out the reasons we should stop apologizing for our actions in “online life.” I found this post very interesting because, more and more, I realize just how wrapped up my “real life” is with my online world. I use e-mail and tweet constantly. I talk more with someone on Twitter that I have never “officially” met than I do some of my closest friends from high school and college. Without Facebook, I’m not quite sure where some of my “real life” friendships would be.

In fact, I tweeted something that pertains to this on Monday as I was waiting to get my windshield replaced:

Funny how tweeps can play a big role for awhile and then drop away. Just like real life except there is a block button (on) Twitter.

Maybe this is the reason that more of us don’t think of the online world as “real life.” Sure, it’s pretty easy to cut someone out of your “real life” (even without a block button) but, ultimately, it is easier to do online. The connections seem more fleeting, even if they shouldn’t.

But, whatever the reasons, I’m making a decision to stop treating the online life as some odd subset of my “real life.” It is my life, no matter what. Instead of IRL I want it to be RTL: Real Life Too.

Here are some of my favorites out of Alexandra’s list of 10 reasons:

1. When you commit to being your real self online, you discover parts of yourself you never dared to share offline.

2. When you visualize the real person you’re about to e-mail or tweet, you bring human qualities of attention and empathy to your online communications.

3. When you take the idea of online presence literally, you can experience your online disembodiment as a journey into your mind rather than out of your body.

6. When you focus on creating real meaning with your time online, your online footprint makes a deeper impression.

9. When you embrace online conversations as real, you imbue them with the power to change how you and others think and feel.

Thanks to @czuegner for retweeting the link. Look for more posts this week, lots of great social media/journalism comments to discuss.