I believe in social relationship. Everyone needs someone else to share feelings for emotional support. Some of us seek to share stories while some of us want to listen to those stories. Although each of us play different roles, we all participate in social relationship. We cannot have sharer without reader, or reader without sharer. Both need to co-exist. That's a basic dynamics of any active community.
If you listen to how Frank started collecting secrets from people, it's difficult to imagine whether anyone would openly share secrets with total stranger, let alone mail it on a postcard to be archived somewhere. But as Frank tells the story at TEDTalks, he started receiving thousands of postcards.
Why?
I think it's because of people's innate need to share and to listen to someone else's story. In the age of social network, there are many platforms available to share your stories. But when it comes to sharing the most intimate and private thoughts, it has become more difficult to find a place to share them. At the price of openness and real identity we have lost the intimate privacy in our social networks.
The fact that Postsecret is attracting so many contributors and viewers is a testament to the fact that there is unserved need in today's social network.
People need a safe place to share their intimate stories. And people want to listen to real stories.
It so happens that I found a good example of this from my news feed. It's called postsecret.com.
Postsecret is a site launched by Frank Warren. It's a place where people share their secrets that they could not tell anyone before. Site started when Frank Warren started to pass out blank postcards to people in Washington D.C. with simple instruction to share their secret anonymously. When postcards started to come in, Frank launched the website to share some of secrets that he received.
If you listen to how Frank started collecting secrets from people, it's difficult to imagine whether anyone would openly share secrets with total stranger, let alone mail it on a postcard to be archived somewhere. But as Frank tells the story at TEDTalks, he started receiving thousands of postcards.
Why?
I think it's because of people's innate need to share and to listen to someone else's story. In the age of social network, there are many platforms available to share your stories. But when it comes to sharing the most intimate and private thoughts, it has become more difficult to find a place to share them. At the price of openness and real identity we have lost the intimate privacy in our social networks.
The fact that Postsecret is attracting so many contributors and viewers is a testament to the fact that there is unserved need in today's social network.
People need a safe place to share their intimate stories. And people want to listen to real stories.
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