Tag Archives: social media

August 25, 2011 · 7:59 am

Reddit somewhere

A poll of social media aficionados:

Are you on Reddit?
How about Delicious?
Technorati?
Digg?
Well surely you’re on Fark.

No? Neither am I.

I did StumbleUpon for a while; even wrote a blog post about it. Word Nymph enjoys a steady stream of referrals from StumbleUpon and, recently, quite a few from Reddit.

I confess, I didn’t know much about Reddit until recently and still, I don’t fully grasp its value. (Speaking of value, reportedly, Condé Nast Publications upped Reddit’s worth to the hundreds of millions of dollars after acquiring it from the two 22-year-old University of Virginia graduates who founded it.)

Reddit got my attention when the so-called social news aggregator directed hundreds of referrals to a blog post I wrote three months ago. My post addressed the etiquette around graduation announcements and thank you notes.

As best I can tell, as Reddit’s paying members—called redditors—post searches, they’re directed to sites where they can find information. Unlike search engines Google and Yahoo, individual searches are posted publicly. Maybe I’m telling you something you already know, especially if you answered Yes to more than one question on my little poll.

Anyway, I haven’t joined Reddit, so I haven’t seen it from the inside. However, I can view the main page where the questions are asked and searches entered. Based on most of the comments and questions I’ve seen, many of which contain the apparently-now-socially-acceptable F-word and worse, a search for how to write a proper thank you note seems out of place.

My hands are  full with Twitter and Facebook so, unless a client shows that my grasp of those others would bring value to their pursuits, I’ll pass.

These sites will give you all the information you’ll never need, including  certain characteristics of Justin Bieber’s wee-wee (my synonym).

But, as best I can tell, only Reddit will point you to the best advice on how to write a proper f—ing thank you note.

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July 26, 2011 · 9:52 am

Plus or minus?

When it comes to new technology, I consider myself a fast follower.

This means I’m not among the first to embrace something just because it’s new. At the same time, I’m typically not one to be dragged into the latest technological wave kicking and screaming. When I got air conditioning for the first time this year, I went willfully, glowing and wilting.

Generally, when something new becomes available, say a new social media platform, I consider it thoughtfully and wade in carefully. Such was my foray into Facebook which, by the way, I still like a great deal.

Lately, Google+ is in my face, like a gnat that flies too close.

My friends and contacts are embracing Google+, which I assume is Facebook’s latest competitor. I’m aware of the dynamic between the two companies and find it no surprise that Google has stepped onto the mat to give Facebook a run for its members.

At least I think I’m aware.  Frankly, I’m not sure I quite understand what Google+ is offering.

Here’s where you come in. Who can give me the 30-second elevator pitch for Google+? I haven’t quite heard it anywhere else.

Google+ appears to have veiled its rollout in exclusivity—in that members must be “invited” to join. If this is the case, I’m already a bit turned off. I’ve been invited by several people I know and trust, but if these same people invited me to join an exclusive club, I’d politely decline. I’m not big on exclusivity.

At the same time, I do suffer from a mild case of FMS, Fear of Missing Something. I’d like to know what’s happening at this party that I might benefit from in some way. Will it enable me to make valuable contacts that will enrich my network in a way that LinkedIn does not? Will I have to re-connect with the same friends and family members with whom I already interact on Facebook? Would I need to create a gmail address? Heaven knows, I don’t need a fifth e-mail address.

If I choose to stay on Facebook, how much more time will I need to spend online? Will Google+ give my friends, God love ’em, more stupid games for which they need my help buying wheat?

Will I be operating in parallel universes? And how many universes is there room for in this galaxy? 

The floor is open and so are my ears (in this case, my eyes).

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June 30, 2011 · 9:13 am

Inner-child abuse

Attention users of social media: Have you been hacked lately?

If you’re reading a blog, chances are that you’re no stranger to social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. And perhaps you’re savvy enough that you’ve avoided falling prey to Internet hoaxes and scams.

I consider myself pretty tech-savvy. I know how viruses, worms and malware work. Actually I don’t know exactly, but I have a sense of how they lure their victims. And still, I’ve been sucked in. I have a theory about why.

These evildoers brilliantly appeal to our inner seventh-graders.

We’re all mature adults who have left our adolescent insecurities in the past, right? Wrong.

It took two or three times of clicking into the underbelly of the Internet before I got smart. A post in Facebook’s news feed tempting me with “OMG, here’s a site that will tell you who’s been looking at your photos.”  An e-mail from a (hijacked) friend, warning me that “hey someone is posting really NASTY tweets about you and linking to your Twitter account, profile is …” The next thing I knew, the things are spreading and the tweets appearing on my blog are corrupted. All because I wanted to know who was looking at my profile and who was saying bad things about me. For my supposedly mature ego, it’s 1973 all over again.

I know all about https versus http and about changing passwords and Googling solutions and all of that; I’m not completely stupid. These hackers are smart people. They know that many of us still harbor our childhood frailties beneath our confident adult selves and that we’ll likely follow the impulse to find out what people think about us. There’s another Facebook hoax I’ve seen (but proudly avoided) that asks people what they think about you. Isn’t that what we cared too much about when we were young, and maybe still care about now more than we should?

Now I’m mouse-shy. Yesterday I was in a hotel room, working away, and I got a pop-up telling me, congratulations, I was Facebook’s Ohio winner of the day. I’m a little creeped that it knew I was in Ohio, but so go these intelligent platforms. It said that if I clicked a link within 70 seconds I’d receive a $1,000 gift card from Best Buy. I confidently scoffed and X’ed out of the application.

And yet, early this morning, before I was fully awake, the first thought that entered my mind was how I would have spent $1,000 at Best Buy.

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January 11, 2011 · 9:59 am

Bottomless skit

As a native of Washington, D.C., I have always thought the nation’s capital could take some lessons from New York City. Fashion. Taxicab regulation. Pizza. Liverwurst on rye.

Unfortunately, it seems that, several years ago, Washington took a tradition from the Big Apple and planted it right here inside the Beltway. C’mon. I’d rather have the liverwurst.

Sunday afternoon, between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m., Washingtonians observed their fourth annual No Pants Metro Ride by boarding the subway and peeling off their pants. Organizers rallied riders via Facebook and other social media, instructing them to act as if nothing were wrong as they rode past all the popular tourist stops. Amusing, I suppose, as temperatures stayed mostly in the 20s. The stunt paid off for riders who took advantage of a local eatery’s offer of half-priced hamburgers for half-dressed patrons.

Those who know me know that I can’t even bear to sit next to someone wearing shorts on an airplane. The thought of spending Sunday afternoon in a crowded subway car awash in goosebumpy, pale, shivering, shrinking flesh made me glad to have been, well, anywhere else.

Now, D.C., can’t we find a more mature way to be like New York?

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August 9, 2010 · 7:50 am

H’lo? H’lo?

Everybody’s talking. They’re saying that nobody’s talking.

In the past week, there’s been some news and commentary about shifts in the ways people communicate. Many are giving up their land line phones in favor of cell phones and some aren’t using their cell phones at all–for talking, anyway. 

In “The Death of the Phone Call,” published in Wired magazine, essayist Clive Thompson puts the bottom line in simple terms. Today, he says, we are in “constant, lightweight contact,” following a dramatic decline in the number of calls made from telephones—especially cell phones. Essentially, we call less but talk more, but we’re “talking” via other media—text messaging, instant messaging, social media and, to a lesser extent, e-mail.

Facebook is a prime example of this constant, lightweight contact. It allows us to know what and how our friends are doing–their successes, worries, vacation plans, and cute things their kids said. We like knowing about these things, but we might not have 30 minutes to spend on the phone hearing about it.

The topic popped up a few other places this week and made me think. If I suspect my son hasn’t read an important e-mail, I usually text him that there is a message that requires his attention. If that doesn’t work, I shoot an instant message across the bow. If that doesn’t work, he gets the dreaded phone call.

It seems, by all accounts, no one wants the call.

An article in The Washington Post yesterday dug deeper into why this is so.

People interviewed for the piece cited a few reasons they don’t reach out and touch someone. Whether or not these are really why the kids don’t call, I don’t know. But, as the caller and the callee, I get it.

The immediacy of the phone call strips the callee of control. By dialing the phone, the caller is saying, I want a block of your time right now–when it is convenient for me. In contrast, texts and e-mails can be sent at the sender’s convenience and read at the recipient’s.  

Those interviewed also said they viewed calling as impolite and intrusive, “more of an interruption than the blip of an arriving text.” Another observed that answering the phone requires a certain amount of psychological energy.

To a large extent, I agree. What disturbs me, though, is a trend that appears to go along with the new communications order. The Post article also noted that people avoiding the phone are often guilty of two sins–not returning calls and ignoring invitations.

Those of us who retreat from a ringing phone are by no means excused of our obligations to behave politely. 

I don’t care what generation we occupy, how busy our schedules are, what time zones we live in or how happy we are to receive a particular call, the rules remain clear:

If someone leaves a message, we return the call.

If someone calls inviting us to something, we R.S.V.P., even if it is by text message.

Postscript:  As it happens, my son called last night, after I was asleep, to share some good news, which he received while reading his e-mail. I welcome that call, day or night.

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