Jan 19 2009
Getting Social
Everyone’s been talking about how social networks are all the rage. They’re the latest best way to promote your blog, business, whatever. Before I go any further, I do have one thing to say. Are these new “social networks” any different than old-fashioned networking? I mean, besides the fact that they’re online. Networking, by definition, requires that you get out there and socialize with others, with the purpose of promoting whatever you’re there to promote. So “social networking” is a redundant term, IMHO. Is there such a thing as anti-social networking? I don’t think so.
Ahem.
Anyway, I’ve been using social networking sites a bit more lately, specifically Facebook and Twitter. Of course, being the dork that I am, I’m not using them to their fullest extent to promote myself and my blog. Sure, the links are there, but I’m just popping in to say hi and see what everyone else is up to. I have a day job, so being on these sites all day to yell “Look at me!!!” is just not possible.
Facebook is one that I resisted signing up for. I have a MySpace account that I rarely check, so the idea of signing up for a similar site didn’t appeal. That is, until more and more friends started sending me invites. It was slow at first; I had a small handful of friends and that was it. Then came a surge of my Imaginary Internet Friends - friends from a site I’ve been frequenting since 2001, the same core group of people who keep that site alive and some of the best friends I’ve never met. After that, old classmates started finding me. That one freaked me out a bit. I’m still trying to block out the whole middle school experience, and high school wasn’t my favorite time either. I wasn’t exactly what you’d call “popular.” Now, I am friends with more people than I was back then. It’s just weird, but at the same time it has been fun seeing what others are up to.
Twitter is what is known as “micro-blogging.” You’re limited to the number of characters, so it’s basically blogging by text message. I really didn’t get the point of it, but I signed up to figure that out. I’m still not sure I understand the point, other than you can’t always be at your computer to blog. I can tweet from my cell phone using ordinary text messaging. I had a few people I was following, until just like Facebook, my IIF’s suddenly appeared. I still have a lot to learn regarding how to use Twitter, but I’ve been enjoying it thus far.
Now, if I can actually delurk myself and participate a bit more on those sites, I might be able to promote my blog a bit better.
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3 Comments to “Getting Social”
I tried a few websites but I gave, mostly by lack of time. I enjoy reading my selection of blogs and chatting online. But I found a lot of social networking websites were just about collecting friends…
I try to keep my friends to real friends, online or real life. I use social networking more for keeping in touch with people, rather than marketing like a lot of professional bloggers do. And StumbleUpon I use mostly when I’m bored - I just click the button to see where it takes me.
Interesting take on semantics you have there.
I used to be on a few social-networking sites, but they were pretty much useless. That’s including (or perhaps I should say especially) Twitter. But I’m pretty sure you can blog by cell phone too. I know you can by email, and I had a little Python script to post over XML-RPC while I was still on WordPress (though, non-ISO-8859-1 characters don’t go over well in b2evolution, so I’m now using the online editor).