What Has Social Media Done For Me?

 A woman pauses to examine her world of social media, a sphere of portraits ranging from friends and family to business associates.

Checking My Facebook Page

This morning I began checking my Facebook page to see what was new and I realized that at least 80% of the posts were by people who I didn’t even know. I have the habit of saying yes to whomever sends a friend request. Now I have posts in Russian, Dutch, Thai, Spanish and languages that I can’t even guess at. Posts from close friends, people I barely know, and people that I don’t know at all.

Feeling A Little Left Out

I have mentioned before that when I peruse Facebook I sometimes start feeling a little left out…though oddly enough the things I feel left out of are things I am not really very interested in anyway. What does that say about me?

Keeping Up On Cool Images

For me Facebook seems to be primarily a way to keep up to date on the cool images that Colin Anderson makes…which of course makes me wonder why I don’t come up with cool images (okay…I do come up with some cool images…but certainly not with the style and romance of Colin’s work). My friend Shalom Ormsby shares his benevolent perspectives on life, Shannon Fagan shares his humorous adventures in China, David Sanger (and many others) share their cool iPhone pix (hey, how come my iPhone pix don’t look cool?), and everyday is somebody’s birthday…which since I only check every couple of days I am usually just finding out I missed someone’s birthday.

Two Thousand Followers And Irrelevant Tweets

Then there is twitter.  I have over 2,600 followers, hardly any of which I suspect ever see the once-a-week tweets that I make. I follow over two thousand twitterers (is that what they are called?), and how can you possibly stay on top of all those tweets? I sure can’t…and most of the tweets are totally irrelevant to me.  Once-in-a-while I do hang in there, scrolling down all those tweets till I find one that looks like it may lead to something interesting…though most the time what they lead to turns out to be something written by someone for whom English is their second, or third, language.

Goolge +, Klout and Linked In

I have a Google + account too. I visit that religiously…ever few weeks. I have no idea what do with it except make circles…but I already go round and round enough already! Klout sends me emails to let me know how influential I am…but I have no idea what the scores mean. I get requests everyday to link to people on Linked In, though mostly they are people I don’t know. I think I read somewhere that you actually are supposed to know the people you link to…of course, I say yes anyway because it seems like the polite thing to do.

Spam, YouTube and Vimeo

The first thing I do every morning is throw away the fifty-odd spam emails I get during the night, the ones my spam filter doesn’t catch. I have three email accounts two of which I haven’t looked at in months. YouTube comments on my video channel of mostly slow motion videos go to one of those accounts…last time I looked at it I just felt overwhelmed…and haven’t gone back since.  That reminds me…I started to put some stuff up on Vimeo, but never followed up with a second submission. Oh Well.

What Has Social Media Done For Me?

What has social media done for me? Well, if nothing else, it gives me something to do while I eat breakfast, something to do every few minutes at work, something to do while I watch TV in the evenings, and something to blog about!