Ning: Do we really need the next best online thing?

Ning. It's the new thing, apparently.

Unlike Facebook (a social networking site for people you already know) and Twitter (I follow you, you follow me), Ning hopes to empower "people to create and discover new social experiences for the most important people and interests in their lives."

"Founded in October 2004...[a]nyone can sign up to create, discover, or join new social networks on the Ning Platform. With over one million social networks on the Ning Platform, the company provides the largest number of unique social networks on the Internet today."

The cause, or interest, comes first. The friends come later.

In our offline days, book clubs started with the same concept. Everyone would rally around a book they liked, and then get together to talk about it.

Except there's something mysterious going on with all this social networking. None of it is happening in real life.

When did we get so scared of each other? And when did we get so identity-obsessed?

Ning offers social networkers, pages that are "Infinitely customizable," "Beautifully designed," and "Easily created and moderated."

Sounds a lot like a human being to me.

But online social networking is just a reflection of us, not the real thing. And perhaps not anything close to the real us. (You want to see pictures of me first-thing in the morning?)

Is it possible that all these social networking sites are doing, is allowing us to become insular to the extreme?

As we paint, and moderate, design and beautify and brand the pages of ourselves online, we're in effect performing cosmetic surgery ON the mirror. Constantly looking back at ourselves and what we want to be, to see, we've perhaps lost the ability to look beyond to the world out there.

I can't advocate for or against these sites since I use many of them daily. I have a Facebook and Twitter account. And I blog here.

And I like pretty things and like my blog page to look pretty.

But not at the expense of getting on with things and doing it. I'm here to blog, not brand.

Ning offers "Branding and visual design freedom" for their user's pages.

The American Marketing Association defines the word "brand" as "A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."

It seems that we're more interested in identifying our differences (a word softened by our use of labels like "unique" instead) than we are in actually coming together and seeing our similarities.

Don't get me wrong. Ning has a great idea, proven by its 4.7 million visitors since January 2009. I've gone on their site and found some networks I'd like to join too.

But here's the thing, I have joined "causes" and networks on my Facebook page.

I joined them, and then promptly forgot about them.

Online flowers, no matter how well-designed or inspired, are incapable of smelling sweet.

Perhaps instead of creating a "new chapter in how people create, organize, and communicate online" we should log-off and start interacting like we used to, with all its potential dysfunction and mess.

Call someone instead of texting (my admitted vice), send them a card instead of an email, go down to the volunteer office of your favourite cause and spend a day in service, rent or buy that bike and join the cycling club.

Let's become experts at real-life communication before we start revolutionizing the world online.

Putting a mouth on my money

I've never had budget. And I'm way too old to admit that.

I'm not particularly extravagant or spendthrift so I've just never worried or thought about it much.

Except nowadays, I feel sort of like a wheel missing a spoke. Everyone is losing their shirts - and more - over money and yet I couldn't really tell you much about my own financial situation. I know I have one - a financial situation that is - I'm just not sure what it looks like.

So last week, I decided I needed to pay attention to the an area in my life that was not very inspiring. I planned that Sunday, today, would be budget day.

I had read about how to make creating a budget fun. Author Terra Atrill made some brilliant suggestions and I immediately went to work laying out fun markers - ooh pretty! - and paper - hooray! - and my expenses...yawn...and a list of my investments...hey, what's that on TV?...and accounts in -- wow, I'm hungry.

Soon enough I was up-and-about cleaning this, organizing that, snooping in my fridge for the chocolate that wasn't there and doing everything to avoid actually creating what really would be a powerful tool for my life.

Why was it so hard? Why couldn't I just suck it up and do it?!

So instead of budgeting I started writing down a list of blog topics I wanted to investigate. By each one, I put a deadline and a reason, or rather, a motivation: "I want to write about this subject because...." Doing this inspired me and led to new, more creative, ideas for expression because it tapped into a core value of mine, a "driving purpose," as my favourite life-coach Tony Robbins would say.

But the pretty paper and shiny markers I set out for my budget-work were right beside me, mocking my inefficiency.

Still, I went back to my blog list and finished up. I then started fleshing out an idea about a Facebook storytelling project I wanted to get off the ground. And my first thought was, "This is going to cost a lot of money but man, it's going to be so cool! I'll bet I could get so-and-so to sponsor it, and I could get this-such-organization to give me a grant, and if I saved such-and-such an amount I could have this done in a year!"

At this point I had forgotten about my budget. I was just on fire - in my head, in my heart, on paper, even my pen couldn't keep up with me.

So I started to write down how much money I would need for the project and in the middle of it all I realised, suddenly (as most things tend to happen), that it's not that I was some sort of budget-bananahead it was that I had never given my money a purpose.

This Facebook project (more to come later) would require money and like a carrot at the end of a stick, I was budgeting without knowing it.

My money wanted goals. It wanted deadlines and discipline as badly as my editor.

So I grabbed my paper and markers and instead of starting out with the mammoth task of doing a daily, monthly and yearly budget I drew up a values-based budget, that didn't have a single dollar or cents sign involved.

Instead, I just wrote out what I wanted my money to do for me.

And it looked like this:

"Money, I'd really like you to give me the freedom to be able to travel and visit my Facebook friends so that I can complete this project. You're going to be a BIG player in this thing. I want you to provide for this project because secretly I think it could transform the way we think about each other and I can't wait to get started. Here's the thing, I just don't think I have enough of you and I worry you're going to run out when I need you. What do you think I should do?"

So if you think that's crazy it you'll think what happened next is just bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

My money talked back.

"Honey," it said, "I want that too. I'm super excited to see you so excited. You're on fire thinking about it and I would love to be the reason you succeed at getting this project done. I mean, can you imagine - your creativity and my resource, we could really do it. Except here's the thing, you're constantly giving me away to strangers. I know you like Carlos Santana shoes and yes, they are fun yet feminine, but do you really need them? I mean you kind of, like, have 20 pairs of shoes already. Imagine if you saved up that money and put it toward your project. Huge! Keep me in your wallet. I promise you'll be successful."

Whoa. My money used the word "like." Like, unacceptable.

Now as crazy as this little exchange seems, it worked for me. Why? Because I realized that like many people, I'm sure, I don't value money for the sake of money. And for the longest time that made me think I was somehow deficient, or worse, indifferent to my own financial security. But that wasn't true, it was just easier to believe.

What became clear was that I hadn't given my money any personal value. That is, I was constantly fighting my bottom-line because I saw it as mutually exclusive to the rest of my life. Money had nothing to do with me being a journalist, or a story-teller, or a lover of people. In fact, it was sort of a burden to the whole thing.

Plech!

So the idea of sitting down a creating a budge-it (in my head, it almost sounds like a swear word) seemed like a total waste of time.

That is until today when my money set me straight.

So translating that conversation into an actual budget - yes, one with figures - didn't feel like a chore. I wasn't forcing myself to have integrity about finances. Instead, I figured out what drove me, what motivated me in my life, and applied it.

And while at the end of my budgeting I may cringe at my financial deficit, I certainly can't act on what I don't know. In this turbulent world, knowledge is key.

And the Web is wealthy with reputable sites, and advice, on staying financially fit. There are resources to help everyone no matter where they are in their conversation with money. CNNMoney.com gives us '11 ways to save money now' and a more, spiritual perhaps, look at how the economic downturn is shaping our cumulative financial values. MSNBC provides practical advice with day-to-day money saving tips like ways to save on groceries.

There's even sites that have fun with money, with a little history on slang words for money. Because, really, when did it all get so serious anyway.

Finally, even when there is no money left to save or spend, there is the fundamental desire many of us have to give of ourselves. We've seen it all over the world - grass-roots organizations like Family-to-Family who were motivated in 2002 after reading a New York Times article about the town of Pembroke, Ill. and its relentless battle with poverty.

And this was in 2002, six years before the downturn in 2008.

Now, like always, is the time to have conversations with ourselves about what we really want and then act on it, not just react to the situations we find ourselves in. While we can't predict the way the world will turn, upside down or right side up, we can control how we deal with it.

I think we forget, I know I have recently, that we always have the power of choice. We're never victims of a situation unless we allow ourselves to be. That's courage, I think, to make a choice for peace, love, productivity, focus, action, healing, and faith in spite of it all.

I heard Tony Robbins once talk about how diamonds are created in moments of intense heat and high-pressure. The same can be true for us.

We really can create miracles out of a crisis.

“The secret of success is to realize that the crisis on our planet is much larger than just deciding what to do with your own life, and if the system under which we live, the structure of western civilization begins to collapse because of our selfishness and greed, then it will make no difference whether you have $1 million dollars when the crash comes or just $1.00. The only work that will ultimately bring any good to any of us is the work of contributing to the healing of the world.”
-- Marianne Williamson --

The Dalai Lama is following me

I joined Twitter two days ago.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter is about having a relationship with not just 327 friends, for example, but thousands of people you may not know. Ultimately, it’s the perfect tool for professionals to network. So far, I’m following just 29 people.

But the one person I didn’t expect to find chirping online was His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I mean, when did Twittering become a spiritual practice?

But there he was. And so, like thousands of others online and in real life, I followed him.

I didn’t expect much, for sure. I liked the idea I would get my cell phone tweets with inspiring quotes and motivational thoughts. Beyond that, though, I thought I’d leave His Holiness to his work among the higher powers, and I would continue my efforts at getting a job down here.

So I was shocked when I went to check my email and saw, in the subject line, the words: Dalai Lama is now following you on Twitter!

The Dalai Lama? Following me?

Holy cow.

The news prompted me to go to his Web site where I read some of his ‘Messages and Speeches.’ I mean, I just couldn’t figure out why he would care what I had to say.

But it was in ‘Messages and Speeches’ that I figured out why he would follow me, Average Joe-ess, as well as 46,898 others. I got how Twittering can, in fact, be a spiritual practice – or at the very least, a practice in love and tolerance.

“The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence,” he said in an online message on Religious Harmony. “It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another. However capable and skillful an individual may be, left alone, he or she will not survive. However vigorous and independent one may feel during the most prosperous periods of life, when one is sick or very young or very old, one must depend on the support of others.”

Now when I saw the Dalai Lama was following me, I thought I knew a little more than he did. I mean really, your Holiness, are you sure you want to be on here? Do you know all the people you’re following?

In the two days I had been on Twitter, I had already blocked two people.

But the Dalai Lama, apparently, didn’t want to. Or more importantly, he didn’t need to.

Why?

Well, I’m not the Dalai Lama but it might have something to do with this idea of in-ter-de-pendence.

In an age when so few people practice what they preach, the Dalai Lama is doing exactly that. On Twitter!

He follows us, just as we follow him, because he has to. To do otherwise would be in complete contradiction to the spirit of love and compassion, and values of interdependence he teaches.

It would seem that a man of such stature, both as a spiritual leader and as a voice of peace, wouldn’t need me or anyone else. And he certainly wouldn’t need Twitter.

But I learned that the first of his three commitments in life is the “promotion of human values” with tolerance and love being two of them.

Why, then, would he not follow me? My success, my happiness, my contentment seem to be as intimately connected to his success as any Queen or president or talk show host.

For some all this online stuff is just too claustrophobic, but for many it’s a break-through in social transformation. Perhaps this is how the Dalai Lama sees it. Perhaps.

And while I remain suspicious of the perennially upbeat and funny tweets, I also know that in real life that same person will have a crappy day. And my hope, one day, is that people get brave enough to tell us how they really feel and even ask for emotional help or guidance: T’ask, instead of Tweet.

I think that would be the real test of our willingness to be interdependent.

Twitter, and Facebook even, are the beginnings of a whole new way of crossing cultures and staying connected. And while we might take our associations lightly, or even frivolously as I do with my FunnyCraigslist tweets, we are all still dipping our toes in the global pool. Eventually - hopefully - we’ll realize how intimately we are connected.

For now, I’m happy to have the Dalai Lama as a “follower.”