Jung’s place, Lake Zurich
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Social media is a fascinating phenomena – Facebook, Twitter, tumblr, Linkdin, blogs, You Tube. Each one offers something different, but enables you to connect with people from all over the world. The one social media that I use but don’t really understand is Twitter.
First, you have a limit – 140 characters. Not words, but characters. In fact, what you just read here amounts to 280 characters (without spaces), which is twice what Twitter allows. Hey, is that a synchro? (140×2.) I use Twitter for links to certain posts on our blog. Self-promotion, in other words. Other people use Twitter to post daily feel-good aphorisms that are usually self-promotional as well:
Love yourself.
Nurture yourself.
Forgive and forget.
Yes, okay.
Occasionally, advertisers end up on my Twitter page, but when I catch them, I dismiss them – i.e., delete them.
Where Twitter seems most valuable is in organizing protests (the Occupiers), revolts and revolutions (the Arab spring) and in offering live coverage of trials, legal hearings, congressional debates, and that sort of thing. Recently, for instance, I first followed the John Goodman sentencing on Twitter. Goodman is the polo mogul charged with vehicular manslaughter in 2010 for the death of a 23-year-old man. I finally gave up on the Twitter feeds and just turned on the TV.
Rob is far more active on Facebook than I am. Neither of us use Linkdin, and we have posted just one thing on tumblr. Our daughter’s generation is really the Facebook and text messaging crowd. When we were looking for a software engineer who might be able to write simple IOS code for a divination app we were developing, she gave us the phone number of a friend who was working in the computer department of a local university.
“Should I leave him a message on Facebook?” I asked. “Or call him?”
Silence. I could almost hear the HUGE sigh that she somehow stifled. “Mom, we use Facebook, but not like that. We use our phones, but for what you’re talking about, we text.”
This is why Megan and I have unlimited text messages in our cell plans.
Social media is changing the world in unprecedented ways. This statement probably seems obvious, until you’re in a position where your You Tube shows the humiliation you endured during a TSA search at the airport. It may be irrelevant until your computer is hacked or your identity is stolen or your email is hacked and you discover you can file an online report with the FBI’s cyber security site. You discover that you can ask your server to text your cell phone with a code that will enable you to seize control again of your email, your blog, your identity.
The Internet is one big synchronicity. Regardless of what the Facebook stock does or doesn’t do, whether Twitter ever extends its 140-character limit, whether your text messaging is limited or not, the technology is here and for better or worse, in sickness and in health, we are connected. Married. Joined at the hip.
This is not only the future, it’s the NOW, an Eckhart Tolle moment. Seize your opportunity, but be aware of that 140-character limit!
https://www.amazon.com/Smart-World-Breakthrough-Creativity-Science/dp/1591394171
I suppose that Facebook could be a starting online point for something like that “smart world” from the link above. As long as you can’t search across a social network/sub-network/group/individual contents as you can for instance on this blog (that “search” button on the right side), you won’t be able to use Facebook for some real innovation process and long-term thinking (try for example to find in Facebook individual people interested in synchronicity – you can do it easily in Myspace). Facebook isn’t the best social network out there. It’s the biggest (eating instead of integrating competitors) because it had from the beginning the lowest entrance barrier (meeting with your friends). Without a real searchable timeline collecting and properly grouping all individual activities across the World Wide Web (some kind of database), Facebook will be random and hyperactive rather than creative and intelligent. But who am I to complain? I don’t have billions of dollars on my bank account. I’m probably just jealous or something.
Good points! The facebook stock sure isn’t doing too great. It took a huge dive after the opening.
I only use Twitter as a marketing tool – though not a particularly good one for us smaller fry. But, as with all social media, if you get ‘it’ out there you never know what might happen, or who will see / read whatever it is you have released, or what the consequences may be. So it can be exciting!
Text is different as it’s normally limited to who will read it. We are more in control – well, we hope so!
I still like periods where I can’t be contacted: texts. phone calls and the like can be very invasive. I don’t panic if I’m not near my phone or computer!
I wish I could like periods like that, without gizmos! Love your synchro pic of the day.
Texting is the biggest bonus for me because I can text all my daughters at once with any family announcements or information. But it’s not really social media, it’s the new answering machine…
Our Author Marketing 101 mythbusting advice is not to be everywhere but to find two social media platforms that you like and network through those. It’s better to be good at two than scattered through ten… I blog and facebook, my partner tweets and is on pintrest. The persona created for those sites will also work on the radio and TV.
Good advice, Terri! Love your take on texting and yes, you’re right, it’s the new answering machine!