From the day I first saw it, several months ago, before it became the rage it has now become, I’ve found it a highly silly concept. Frivolous and something befitting only the proverbial blonde. But these days, the world prefers all that’s simple and frivolous and so today, the site is one of the fastest growing sites on the Web. The founders admit that their target audience was housewives from a southern state in the United States of America. I don’t think even they expected the intelligentsia of the world praising it like it’s the next best thing after the invention of the printer!
And so they are all using it, from the blondes, to the housewives to the erudite. I’ve seen incredibly intelligent people for whom I have had great regard add the silliest of things there. But that’s not what really irked me about the site.
This is a site that does not let me use my email ID to sign up. I HAVE to use either my Facebook or Twitter account. When I use Facebook it loudly announces that it will never share my data without asking me. But it does, immediately so. In the very next slide it says that by signing up, I’m authorising it to post on my behalf. I raise my eyebrow and wonder why nobody has kicked a fuss about this. Oh wait, it’s a Silicon Valley project!
I go in…and they ask me to choose topics so they can suggest people to follow. I choose some topics and what do they do next? They don’t suggest. They make me follow a dozen odd people, quite a few from my Facebook contacts, ensuring that all those people know I’m now using the site. Sure they give me the option to stop following, but the damage has already been done hasn’t it? And this from a site that is well established and funded. But as I said a Silicon valley project, as silly and outrageous as it may be, can do as it wishes.
If a small company in India struggling to get the attention of users and investors did half of this, the world would be up in arms, screaming about privacy. Pardon me if I feel just a little outraged at the inequality and pardon me if I refuse to use this site. Not because it’s so silly, but because it’s a living example of how we continue to condone and promote all that comes from the land of the Big Brother and ignore great talent just because it doesn’t have the San Francisco tag attached to it. And then, they talk about equal opportunities for all. Humbug.
PlainGeets 