There’s a saying, “the quietest people have the loudest minds.”
If you are an introvert, don’t you find this true in your life? Do you get people showing disbelief when they see you active on social media, yet hearing you admit that you are an introvert? Do you always have thoughts so strong you just can’t verbalise them to the people around you?
I have many introverted friends. Sometimes, it takes a lot of effort to hear their opinions. In the New York bestseller book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain, Cain acknowledges that introverts are the ones who prefer listening to speaking. They come up with brilliant ideas and innovations but do not self-promote. They prefer working alone than in a team.
Cain then proceeded to conduct a TED talk, which she highlighted that suppressing the introvert in you is a loss for the people around you. She differentiates that shyness is totally different from introversion- Shyness is the fear of social judgement; Introversion is just a way of reacting to stimulation.
For all introverts out there, I wonder if the newly established social network Anomo is a good fit for you.
Anomo is a social network for introverts, by introverts.
“Democratising the way we socialise where first impressions are based more than just a simple photo.” This is the most emphasised section when you enter Anomo’s site. Perhaps you feel skeptical about this because you have not heard about it. Precisely. This is exactly what the founder intended to. Why market aggressively when the people you are targeting are introverts?
Anomo leverages on the fact that people prefer to hold different personas, or ‘masks’, when they are interacting online. With this in mind, he wanted his social network gives users full control of their privacy.
How it works is simple. Every user can create his or her own anonymous avatar as an online persona representing you. Through games or chats, you can interact with other users while still holding your avatar.
Anomo emphasised on their website that the user is given full control on how much you want to reveal about one’s self within each interaction one have. It also believes this is one differentiating point it has from Facebook (especially after its acquisition of Whatsapp and how we predict it will transform the chat platform) – users information are locked by default and only revealed based on each interaction. Below is a screenshot of their privacy page.
Perhaps what is innovative about Anomo is the app’s ability to showcase to a user which other avatars are within the vicinity of your location.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNN1mSiDAcg
As an introvert myself, and I’m not sure if I would want to be talking anonymously to someone located so near to me. It feels overwhelming already. Also, although it seems a legit way to determine if a user is real through an initial Facebook log in, I feel uncertain how the data from my Facebook will be ‘locked’ away from other users.
To all introverts – what’s your take on this? Would you use it?
Also read: I’ve seen the future in Singapore, and I have basically stopped using the social media