Entering the 21st Century kicking and screaming – ok, that was a little dramatic, lets just say I have my doubts…
Well I have been busy over the weekend, no, not riding my Harley – probably wouldn’t of gotten a headache if I had (have plans for my Harley this week J )
It is something that I have resisted for a lot of years, but now it has become apparent and almost a necessity to become involved in as I quest to serve the masses my blog.
I am of course talking about Facebook, Twitter and even Linkedin. Even as an avid Internet user I have to admit that this part of cyber world is a bit overwhelming to me. (I know that there is much more out there to ‘plug into’, but hey, you got to start somewhere J )
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I could never quite figure out why people have been attached so much to it. Maybe it is because some people like an audience, like to be the center of attention or just want to be a part of something whether they have anything interesting to say or not – but like it or not, it is the “gathering place” in our cyber world today and it dosen’t look like it is going anywhere for awhile. I suppose many people just have that love / hate relationship with it, which explains why it has lasted this long… (I personally think it just replaced all those ‘Chat Rooms’ that were so popular back in the 90’s)
[Here is an interesting study of “Why do people use Facebook” I found, and I think it actually answered my question – hmmm, do I really want to be on here…]
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[I couldn’t really tell you how new this is, probably has been around for awhile, so if you don’t know, here is what you do to create a business page on Facebook: “Create Page” (under the same little arrow that you can sign out on) You then are presented with six options; Local business or place, Company, organization, institution, Brand or product, Artist, Band or Public figure, Entertainment, Cause or community – figure out what you are answer the plethora of questions, set your layout to portray who you are and ‘tadah’ another page to flaunt yourself on! - kind of reminded me of the similar ‘Pages’ as in blogspot where you can separate your main blog with other interests. Maybe that is where Facebook got it from! – although seeing I am new to both, I don’t know who thought it up first]
I guess it is a good thing that I added my business, at least I felt it was more of a productive thing to do than just set up another page of “self indulging” blabber about me – (There is enough of that on googlePlus and the thought of putting so much personal information about myself on Facebook that it wanted me to made me nauseous) My reasoning for going with Facebook in the first place was because most of all the businesses I know are on there (can that many people be wrong?) and after all it is a very popular social gateway. Maybe it is possible to get some new business, that would certainly help me with my new venture of dabbling into the world of writing – like pay the bills!
Flipping over to the bad side of things - It took me most of the morning to answer the endless amounts of who I was and what I like, and then it force fed me things it thought I might be interested in and just before it nudged me into signing up to ‘like’ pretty much everything in the universe it wanted me to contact everyone in my address book and announce that I had arrived and to ‘friend’ me. Suffice to say I didn’t give it too much personal information, (I will probably never really trust the Internet no matter what site I am on, says the girl who spends vast amounts of time on it) and I felt that it would be just rude if I blasted all my contacts in my address book. (Maybe it is just me, but it felt like I would be sending spam mail – I can’t tell you how many times I just deleted the invitations to FB from people over the years who had me in their address book, (just to be clear, because I didn’t want to join FB at the time – not because they sent me the invite) so I couldn’t bring myself to do it) I know, that is the whole point… J
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Seeing this is foreign territory for me I thought I better read up on what Twitter is about and found that there is a Etiquette to Tweeting - Actually it is very reminiscent of how you would (or should) conduct yourself in the ‘real’ world… The posts here are very short sentences of 140 characters or less – it makes you really focus on what is the best way to convey your message, which is a good thing, however on a bad note, some of the short posts completely got me stumped – it reminded me of my ‘chat’ days way back when… great, one more “language” to figure out. I think I am going to like Twitter the best out of all of the social media I joined, at least that is how I feel now (it could change…)
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Geesh, remembering all this terminology is like taking up another language…. html was easier to learn…
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Who would of thought that this whole area of the Internet produced so much, well to put it nicely, clutter. A person could get lost in there!
I know, I guess I too am adding to the clutter now J (One person’s garbage is another person’s treasure…) I guess you just have to sift through it and sort what is more important. You type in your keyword and then you have to decide from the millions of links that appear in front of you which is really relevant. (Sometimes a frustrating and long process, especially if you don’t figure out the right keyword to use…)
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Linkedin, well what can I say, it is business. I put my suit on and go to work…. Takes a bit of the fun out of it, but we all need to earn a living sometime J
Twitter takes some getting used to, I have to admit, I really didn’t get some of the tweets - Is it just me? I know I can be ‘thick’ at times but some of it just makes no sense to me at all, where do the conversations start and end! I have never felt so “out of touch” as I do now. On a positive note, as I am writing this I just got another follower! Woohoo! I am a somebody! I guess I feel all important now that I have finally been noticed – Twitter gave me that “instant gratification” as compared to the other social media sites I joined. I finally have reached the being “Followed” status here! Hmm, do I need to get a cell phone now?
All in all, it was a pretty painless experience, as long as you have plenty of spare time to do it! however I did get a headache from staring at my computer screen all those hours... But I am not so sure about the upkeep, now I need to find more time in my already 14 hour day to post to my Blog, then head over to Google+ to post a tidbid of my latest image or thought, then onto Facebook to see what is going on there (see if I got friended) , then over and do a Tweet or two and read the tweets that I have chose to follow, then a check in with Linkedin to read more and then before you know it the day is gone…I think I might need to quit my day job now!
Would I say I wasted my time? Well, I suppose if it produces even a little bit of interest then it was worth it – if nothing happens, well I have wasted my time on worse things…
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