The patterns in Gtalk

There are lots of patterns in the status message of gtalk. To begin with Gtalk is a chat tool provided by Google. There is an option to provide a customised status message by every user, which will appear below their name on their friend's gtalk friend's list. Few of them leave it blank, few of them put quotes, few of them provide the music track they r listening to, few the hot news headline, few of them put their current state of mind, few of them put their aspiration, few provide links to the article or website they like and few others use it as a marketing tool to promote their website !!!
So all in all a simple status message provides a platform for people to say to the rest of the world what they want to.

When you look at the status message, you can make out the state of mind of the individual, whether he/she is happy, sad, gloomy, depressed, so on. Even the people who feel they r not good at expressing themselves in words, come up with a status message with a punch !! Thats the beauty of the gtalk status message. These status messages have introduced me to interesting songs, thought provoking quotes, wonderful websites, and terrific one-liners. It serves as a key to the Pandora's box.

If you want to get the attention of your friends, put up an interesting/sensitive/controversial status message on your gtalk and behold your friends will be pinging you left, right and centre. The message can be something like 'I am in Love'. Your friends will noy just chat with you but they will be discussing about your status message when you are not online as well and you will get all the attention you want.

If you keep track of an individual's status message for some time, you will know what is happening in other person's life. I am talking about people who do not mind expressing themselves on gtalk. There are varying shades here. Few of them just want to put quotes, few of them restrict themselves to what happens in the work place and very few venture into the personal domain. But things are chaning at a rapid rate here. People are moving from nothing to something, from links to quotes, from quotes to work place experience and slowly the personal side of the individuals is making its way into the gtalk status message.

Now, let me talk about the pattern that led to this post. This is the pattern with a timestamp. To put it simply, at any given instant of time if you scroll through your gtalk list and read the status message of the individuals, there might be few patterns in it. The first I time I noticed that was when most of my friends had a status message which reflected negative feelings. Someone had something on pessimism, someone was cynical, someone hated something, so on. Since then I started making a conscious effort to check the status messages of my friends regularly. Once I did that I was very surprised. There are patterns everyday. I must tell you, I have more than 200 people on my gtalk which includes my colleagues at office, my MBA batchmates, my engineering classmates, my sport mates, so on. They are located across the globe. This is not a pattern that is visible across one set of people in one geography. These are the patterns that was always there, but we never noticed. Interesting similar stuff happen to lots of people at the same time !!!

The simple text based gtalk status message has changed the way I see things. I can lock myself in my room and know what is happening with my friend thousands of miles away without actually talking or chatting with him/her.

I think the time has come to change the old adage 'Face is the index of the mind' to 'gtalk status message is the index of the mind of the invisible netizen'.