I'm slow. I'm not talking about my running although I rarely post sub 10 minute miles because I don't see the need. I'm talking the whole Web 2.0 Social Internet thing. Maybe that's because I'm not social. Maybe it's because I don't really care much for trends. Maybe it's because I was too busy doing push-ups to notice. I dunno.
When MySpace was all the rage, I looked at it and said, "I don't get it." I created a page cuz all the cool kidz were doing it and then I abandoned it. I came back a year later or so and put a wolf background on it cuz all the cool kidz had done that like, ages ago. The cool kidz had music and slide-shows and pictures of themselves nekkid and all kinds of great stuff. I had managed to fill out about half of the profile stuff and friended a couple of people who had way cooler MySpaces or TheirSpaces than me.
A friend of mine knew about my apathy toward MySpace and said that I should forget about all the cool kidz and I should come hang out with the grown ups on Tribe. While, I can say without a doubt that I'm a terrible follower, I can say that I am also very curious and that when friends tell me to check something out, I do. It's curiosity and politeness all rolled up in one. One of the cool things about the people that I have chosen to be my friends is that they have very different lives than me. When they suggest something for me, I'm going to get a new look at something.
Compared to the teenage land of MySpace, Tribe was definitely an adult landscape. It was edgier in many ways and was no place for kids to venture. I joined with different tribes and took part in their world and then it all kind of fell apart. I'm not sure of everything that happened but there was a push to take away the edginess and the adultness of the place. I know there was a huge uproar from some the Tribees about the push to reduce or eliminate the porn on the site. Anyway, all the drama around it was too much for me and I jumped ship. I'm not a drama kind of guy.
Then FaceBook came out. Boooring by MySpace standards because you can't put up wolf wallpaper or add music to your Face or your Book or whatever the hell that means. It sounds like a high school year book or something. Facebook didn't have the coolness factor of MySpace or the edginess of Tribe. I have to confess that some of the MySpace spaces that I checked out were incredibly hard to read because of all the extras. So, while FaceBook was boring, the clean cut easy-to-read format actually appealed to me.
I also liked the very basic status thingy. I could put in a couple of lines and all my friends and family would know what I was up to. I had originally thought that my blog would serve that purpose but very little of this blog has been in journal format. I've had runs at teaching people about personal finance, politics, and now I'm on to what has been my passion for the last few years, fitness. FaceBook filled the role of letting people know what I was doing very nicely and I could do it all at once. One status entry: everyone that cares notified. Nice.
These were the big ones. I also got invited to places like Plax-something or other, Linkdin, and others that I have long forgotten. I have accounts with them because I wanted to have a look around but none of them held my interest for long.
Then Twitter came out. Everyone had to have a Twitter account so I created an account to see why everyone had to have a Twitter account. "I don't get it," I said. This was FaceBook's status thingy and that's all and in a very short format. All I could picture was getting texts that said:
"Just had a yummy breakfast."
"Riding the bus, killing time, sending useless tweets."
"Dude! Went to the bathroom. Do NOT go in there!"
"Switching from Missionary to Cowgirl."
I went back to FaceBook.
Here's a very important factor in this story. All of my cellphones have been phones. I didn't get a camera on my phone until they quit making phones that didn't have cameras. The first phone that I had with a camera, I got as a side dish, because I wanted something with an MP3 player. So, Twitter was out anyway because I wasn't a texter. I hated texting. What a useless sport that was. I heard about the speed texting awards and thought, "Good gawd, what have we become?" It wasn't the actual texts that I hated because I used to be a full-time IM person with YahooMessenger and ICQ (back in the day, eh?). I'm okay with the quick back and forth and find it very convenient. It's just not convenient when you have to hit the "7" button 15 times so that you can put a "R" on the screen.
Texting was out and even if I had thought Twitter had a use, it was out by extension.
Lo and Behold, I decided to actually buy a Droid. It has a qwerty keyboard. I'm a texter now. Not a crazy texter but it's good for getting quick simple info to someone when you don't care if or how long it takes for them to respond. I like the convenience of it.
Then, as part of some research that I'm doing, I decided to go take another look at Twitter. There are now a couple of things to it that appeal to me.
#1. I was able to link this blog to my twit account. That means that when I post a blog, everyone that is following me should get an announcement that I have a new blog post out. I think this is great. I try to get my daily post out around 3pm but it routinely goes out a bit later than that, especially on Mondays and Tuesdays (and today). Now, instead of everyone constantly checking back in eager anticipation of what I'm going to say that day (and I know that you all do eagerly wait - at least that's how I picture it - don't ruin it for me by saying different), all my wonderful blog readers can follow me on Twitter and get the notification. I don't even need to do anything. My blog talks to Twitter, they come up with a cooperative plan, and voila! everyone knows there is a new blog post available to the world. How cool is that?
#2. Those of you that are friends with me on FaceBook may have noticed a significant drop off in my participation there, even on the easy to do status update thingy. My blog posts are announced there because once again, I don't have to do anything for that to happen. I write a blog post and it magically appears on FaceBook. If I had to do it manually, it wouldn't get done.
Twitter has solved my problem for me because now all my tweets are supposed to end up on my FaceBook status thingy. That's like killing 5 birds with 1 stone or something. Now, since I seem to be too busy or apathetic to actually go to FaceBook to update my status, I can do it while sitting on the bus or the toilet or during a board meeting.
"You should see Johnson's nose hairs today. Someone pass him a comb."
So far I have sent two tweets. The first one was to test it by clicking the "tweet this" at the bottom of one my blog posts. The other one was supposed to be a message to my wife that instead went out to the whole world on Twitter. You can delete those from Twitter but it's harder to go around to everyone's phone and hit delete. "There is no undo!"
For those of you that got that tweet, I'd ask you to sincerely not retweet that I was waiting for my wife at home wearing nothing but Saran Wrap and a pair of scissors on a ribbon around my neck. I'd really appreciate that.
Anywho, for all of you that would like to be notified of new blog posts when they come out and some of the funnier random thoughts that pop into my head, you can now officially follow me on Twitter.
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I am an Independent BeachBody Coach for BeachBody.com, a company that offers fitness programs, supplements, and equipment that have absolutely changed my life.
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Feel free to "friend" me on Facebook or follow me with Twitter.
