Your Words Will Speak Louder Than Actions Online

Has there been a time where you sent an email to a friend or colleague and somehow they misunderstood what you wrote? I am not going to lie. It happens to me a lot. What's intended as a funny joke can come across as being bitchy and rude (both of which I seldom am...honestly, just ask my friends!) and then you have to send a follow up email with a bunch of smiley faces or make a phone call explaining what you really meant. It's kind of annoying that we have to further explain ourselves in case we accidentally hit the bold ,italics, words are larger than others, or if you change the color/font of your email.

"Does red mean something is important? "
"Does red, bold, & large italic font mean someone's upset?"

There are no English classes that teach proper internet etiquette. I've witnessed many fights and tears over emails, Facebook, and Twitter posts. What the hell is going on here? Since when did our society get so sensitive over a bunch of words posted online?

With the explosive growth of online social networking, blogs, website and communities, words carry a much greater value than ever before. People can now judge you based on the number of Facebook posts and comments, and the type of content you post for people to see. There are apps that will allow you to speak on your phone and it will send your message as a text to your buddies. And lets not forget auto-correct on the iPhone!!! With one accidental touch you can text the wrong word and completely change the text conversation into an awkward one.
See example below:

If you think your friends and family are are the only ones profiling you based on your posts, and location check-ins, then think again. There's a bunch of companies and marketers who are getting into text analytics and they actively analyzing the text you are posting online right now. There's a shift in how companies collect data for market research and marketing these days. The ability to analyze a customer's open-ended text and auto-compare it to cultural semiotics, the study of signs, symbols, and signification, is easier than ever with text-analytics software. Based on the words you've posted, or how you contextualized it, you may be surprised to see the kinds of advertisements that pop up right now on your online communities. On my personal Facebook page I've stated I was single so I don't get any ads aimed at married people, but I must have posted the word "husband" or "hubby" a couple of times. Now I get ads for baby products, mortgages, and girls weekends away from the home-are they suggesting a weekend break from my husband?

Pictures and simple images, by contract are losing a bit of it's effectiveness and shine as the world expands the online experience. With the increase in online communication people will be judged and analyzed more by the words they post than ever before. A picture may be worth 1000 words but a picture with a 5 word comment is worth 1005 words. More and more people will move towards surfing the internet on their mobile devices causing the ability to analyze images to greatly diminish. Words, in contrast, will carry an even greater significance. Now is the time to buy stocks in words because the value is going to sky-rocket. Well, I wish you can buy stocks in words....

Coming from a qualitative research background, I spent hours reviewing and presenting open-ended comments from focus groups, interviews, and analyzing free form open-ended text to help my clients profile and categorize their respondents into actionable data. Technology is making this task even easier to collect and analyze this cheaper than ever before, however, one must question how accurate is this really? Advances in semiotics and text analytics software will make this more accurate and a piece of cake to do soon and it can capture those words while you are "sharing" your experience on your online profile.

A part of me is a bit worried about this trend but a part of me also knows this is a part of the changing society and it's already happening with us not even realizing it. Who knows, maybe someday we will laugh at the idea that we worried about online privacy and companies analyzing our online profiles in the year 2011.