Social networking is the express way of all communication. That's a fact. It's crazy that just a short time ago it didn't even exist. Now everyone you know stares down at their phones. It's ok. I do it too. I use Facebook, Twitter and Google + all the time. Sharing a picture, a video, what's going on around you, it's infinitely addictive. And that comes from the fact that it's not just one sided. We're connected. Not just to our friends, but to anybody and everything. When we read an article from an online paper there's a real chance we can comment to the author and have him or her reply back. The blog post before this one was about how a friend in KC is sending me a Guinness flavored cupcake in a jar. A friend who, by the way, i only know through this blog and through Twitter. And she in her infinite awesomeness baked and sent me a cupcake. Thank you, Brandi. How crazy is that? These connections are real. Even from just an informational standpoint, to not just spew out content but to really gather it is where the gold is when talking about the art of social networking. What a streamlined process. If i want to be the first to hear news about my favorite celebrity all i have to do i follow them on their social platform of choice. Guess where the news reporters and gossip columnists get their info from? Talk about breaking news, just now as i'm typing this twitter tells me Whitney Houston died. Wow. What a loss. I'll always remember her for singing the national anthem. This is exactly what social networking is. Instant. Direct. Connection. We're living in a time where we can completely cut out the middle man. It always blows my mind when the celebrity communicates back. It's like a wasabe punch in the nose and you realize, again, that the connection is real. I always get that feeling of being Neo in the Matrix and all I see is binary code raining down. I don't know Kung Fu yet, but i'm ready for the jump program.
So if everything is connected and we understand how big a tool the platforms can be, not just to gather info but to share it back as well, then wouldn't we be wasting a huge opportunity by not using these platforms for way more than showing off a funny picture of a cat wearing a helmet?
True. The cat rules. But the fact that I
It seems like new social networking platforms are popping up all the time trying to be the next best thing. There's Instagram, Path, and now this Pinterest one i'm seeing a lot of my Facebook friends latching onto.
With Instagram, what i don't quite understand is why i would need to post a picture to Instagram when i can just post that same picture to Facebook, Twitter and Google + directly. When i see a tweet or a FB post linking to an Instagram pic i'm always asking "Why didn't they just upload that directly to FB or Twitter instead of linking to it?". Maybe it's the cool square retro processed look of Instagram. I don't know.
Then there's Path which i truly know zero about except that its logo looks a whole lot like the logo of Pinterest.
(left to right: Pinterest, Path logos)
From what i've seen of Pinterest, it's a very straight forward online pinboard where you "pin" pictures and videos you see from all over the web onto your personal "pinboard". And you can have several boards, organized by content. The cool part being that the content you pin up, when clicked on by your followers, will ultimately link back to the original web page you took it from.
Everything. Is. Connected.
I'm totally gonna learn Kung Fu.
Seems like a winner, although I don't have anything on Pinterest yet. I'd like to be able to pin my photography from this blog to my pinboard knowing that it would lead followers back here, but when i tried adding the "Pin this" button to the blog it didn't work. Learning curve. Fine. I don't know Kung Fu just yet.
A couple of days ago on Google Plus i was added by a couple of "power users" on the G+ platform. I call them "power users" because they're definitely not using it to post pictures of
It's a cool time to be alive.
The end.
