I don’t know Amal Jaraisy – in fact, I don’t know anything about her lawsuit against Google Israel other than what was written on several websites – but I do know that she has zero chance of getting her lawsuit certified. According to news reports, Jaraisy, a resident of Nazareth, is suing Google in an Israeli court for enrolling her in Google Buzz without her permission, and revealing information she wanted to keep private. Buzz apparently chooses users for you to follow, a la Facebook, and publicly displays the names of those you are following – based on your private Gmail correspondence, so everyone knows the people you’ve been e-mailing back and forth with – even if you’d rather keep that relationship private.

Jaraisy is seeking to turn the lawsuit into a class action suit, although I couldn’t find a web site to sign up to participate. There are certainly plenty of angry people who would sign up for such a lawsuit, as many of those who got “Buzzed” automatically don’t like that they were automatically enrolled in the program.

However, it is highly doubtful that a lawsuit against Google would go anywhere, since there are so many provisos and “outs” in the terms of service all users agree to when they sign up for a service. Regarding the use of Gmail contacts for a purpose other than email. A quick scan of the Gmail TOS, like all TOSes, basically gives Google the right to add, subtract, or otherwise alter the services it provides or doesn’t. One relevant line in the TOS is in paragraph 4.2, which reads: “Google is constantly innovating in order to provide the best possible experience for its users. You acknowledge and agree that the form and nature of the Services which Google provides may change from time to time without prior notice to you.”

Ms. Jaraisy is an intelligent young woman – here Facebook page says she attended the Technion, Israel’s top science school. One could assume she knows her way around a computer, and a TOS. So why is she bringing the lawsuit? And why is the first Google Buzz lawsuit being brought in an Israeli court? Wouldn’t it make more sense to sue in a California court, where Google is headquartered? After all, the Israeli office does not operate as an independent entity, and Google’s facilities in Israel are dedicate to research and development, not management.

I have some ideas on what the motivation here might be, but I need more information – and as soon as I find what I’m looking for (which I’m pretty sure is out there) I’ll let you know.

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Thanks to the internet, we can share our most intimate ideas and thoughts with people all over the world. With Twitter, the privilege of getting thousands (or tens of thousands) of people to check out what you think is important in life is accelerated and democratized even further, since you don’t even have to bother with a blog if you want to reach “your public.” In a sense, we’re all celebrities now – just like Tom Wolfe predicted forty years ago, in the midst of the “Me Decade.”

That term, so closely associated with the 1970s, came from the name of an article Wolfe wrote for New York Magazine (it’s a great story, and if you’ve never read it, click on the link!). The article investigated some of the (then) new phenomena that really took hold during that decade – things like religious and secular cults, the sexual revolution, huge divorce rates, and the first stirrings of Christian “Moral Majority” style politics. Wolfe traces these developments to the Sixties, but by the mid-Seventies, they were part of the mainstream, no longer reserved for the hippies.

Americans have always been rugged individualists, and during the Seventies, Wolfe says, they took that individualism and combined it with the money they earned during the (then) “Thirty Year Boom” after World War II to start engaging in activities previously reserved only for the rich and powerful – namely,

“remaking, remodeling, elevating, and polishing one’s very self . . . and observing, studying, and doting on it. (Me!) This had always been an aristocratic luxury, confined throughout most of history to the life of the courts, since only the very wealthiest classes had the free time and the surplus income to dwell upon this sweetest and vainest of pastimes.”

In other words, all Americans could now become part of that class of aristocrats who could see

“my life becoming a drama with universal significance . . . analyzed, like Hamlet’s, for what it signifies for the rest of mankind.”

Wolfe called the new attitude to “Me” the “Third Great Awakening,” comparing it to previous religious movements that changed the face of the world. The “liberation of the self” was a kind of religious movement – it was the liberation of the repressed who for so long had been treated like “the proletariat” by their self-proclaimed social betters. Now, everyone was important, said Wolfe – it was the logical end-product of democracy.

At the end of the article, Wolfe asks:

“Where the Third Great Awakening will lead—who can presume to say? One only knows that the great religious waves have a momentum all their own.”

A great question, at the time, and Wolfe’s article was one of the most influential in the late seventies (at least two professors in my college had us do assignments on it!). But it’s now been forty years since that article was written, and the results of the Me-based  Third Great Awakening can now be analyzed.

Most social analysts agree that the internet is the most democratic vehicle for expression in human history. For better or worse, anyone can proclaim him/herself an expert on anything – whether or not they have a graduate degree or years of experience in a field. Of course, if you want people to take you seriously, it helps to have the credentials.

But short of declaring myself a medical doctor or lawyer (or other government-licensed professional), I can pretty much brand myself any way I want. And thanks to blogs, Google (thanks to which we have SEO and can theoretically be seen by hundreds of millions) – and especially thanks to Twitter, I can believe and say anything I want about myself, and broadcast my “Me-ness” to tens of thousands, or even millions. There are so many “marketing experts” out there who claim to have “the secret” to making millions on-line, and maybe they do. But a world (and a platform, like Twitter), where everyone is an expert can only be possible in a world after the Me Decade.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it! I remember a discussion on a Quark xPress newsgroup from about ten years ago, where one of the posters once mourning the “lower quality” of publishing as a result of DTP. In the old days, the guy said, you had to be an “expert” – using the hot type, setting up the plates, etc. Now, any kid could make their own newspaper or magazine, and it was ruining business! As one of those “DTP kids,” I felt bad for this gentleman, who was obviously losing out in what had become an outmoded, dinosaur business. But why shouldn’t I have an opportunity to have my say if the technology allows it?

If there’s anything Twitter proves, it’s that there’s room at the top for everyone. Just like anyone could be an expert on DTP or marketing, and everyone can have their own blog, Twitter lets everyone take advantage of technology to market or brand themselves any way they want. The ability to be who YOU want – and to get others to take it seriously – is the ultimate end-product of the Me Decade, and Twitter is the tool that makes it happen!

So people check out your tweets, or surf to your Facebook page. What does it get you – directly, I mean? Sure, there’s the “value-added” of your enhanced online reputation that can get access to useful information – or even help you land opportunities- but you don’t get any specific benefit when people actually visit your pages. In the case of Facebook, clicking on your page lets them charge more money for ads, and find more customers for their “gifts” – and Twitter will figure out how to cash in one day very soon, as well. But what about YOU? Where’s YOUR payday?

Right here – at Inter8ing, an Israeli company, which holds social media popularity contests, where you get your buddies to vote fpr your profile. The most popular profiles on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, My yearbook, Netlog or Hi5 – meaning the profiles from these sites that garner the most votes at Inter8ing- win cash prizes! The top prize on the page right now is $200 (they pay through Paypal).

It looks like anyone from anywhere with a profile on these sites can join, and anyone can vote on the web (Israeli voters can vote via SMS).

According to the site’s rules, you can solicit friends, or even vote for yourself. All they care about is the votes. Why not use Twitter to get your buddies to vote for you? It could work like Twitter followers – “you vote for me and I’ll vote for you.” The $200 winner has 436 points, which I take to mean 436 votes. That’s small change for Twitter members with 4,000 or 5,000 followers! Talk about “monetizing” your Twitter popularity!

I wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post a couple of weeks ago on using Twitter to find a job (link is to archive on my own site, original JP edition here). I thought it was a pretty good article, and so did Mikael, who is visiting from Sweden (he blogged about it in Swedish!). He sent me a direct message on Twitter, and asked if he could meet me to discuss how social media was being used in Israel (I’m not an expert, but I play one in the newspaper )

Only one problem – I got his message a week before Pesach, which of course is crazy time around here, like everywhere else. Since he was based in Jerusalem he naturally wanted to meet me there, but I had already done my Jerusalem thing that week and wasn’t planning to go back.

So I invited him out here – to “the ranch.” Because I live in an area that is uh, disputed, I thought it would be interesting for Mikael to get a look at a side of Israel that I figured he hadn’t ever seen. And, he accepted. So last Friday afternoon, Mikael and his wife drove out here for a Shabbat dinner (sans challah, of course – and I don’t think they finished their piece of matza!). We saw the sites – particularly, the top of the hill, where you can see the whole country, practically (that’s not them in the photo, btw). Our Swedish guests even came to shul Friday night – a very gutsy move, if you ask me!

Of course, our guests said they had a great time (I hope they really did!) But we Shamahs had a blast! My kids were very excited over the whole idea of visitors coming from so far away, people whom they would otherwise never have probably met (the couple is from northern Sweden, a destination that is definitely not on the way during our usual annual hegiras to family in New York and Los Angeles!). We discussed lots of subjects, including politics (can Israelis hold a discussion on anything without including politics?), the kids’ school, Judaism, and why synagogues have a mechitza (I sensed that Mikael’s wife wasn’t too happy about being on “the other side,” but they were too polite to make an issue out of it!). One of my kids even tried to talk to them using Swedish “TV accents” (you know what I mean!), but they were very cool about it. Kids!

And despite my plea in a phone conversation before their visit (I said “your presence is present enough for us” – good line, huh?), our guests insisted on bringing gifts – an album of photos by Swedish photographer Sune Jonnson, and this very pretty trivet!

So, even though we didn’t get to discuss the details of how people in Israel use social media, I think the entire evening was an object lesson in exactly that. If not for Twitter – Mikael’s interest in it, my writing about it, and his DMing me using it – we would never have had the opportunity to meet them, much less have them visit our  home. And anyone else from exotic (or even less exotic) locations who wants a taste of “down home hospitality” are invited to drop me a line (leave a comment or write me at ds @ newzgeek.com!)