My first encounter with social media was Facebook. At the time, I had no idea what it was and felt I had passed the age limit for such things anyway. A bit old school, I still held on to the belief that social networking meant popping by your friend's office and seeing what's doing for the night. When we had a meet up, we'd actually meet up--as in, at someone's house. It was expected that you just wouldn't BYOB, but you'd also bring your game face, belly laugh, tears and your provocative commentary. It was kind of like "The View," but without the redhead...Did we have a redhead in the bunch? I'm just not remembering a redhead.
But I digress. Again.
Anywho, I had moved on to another phase in life that was met with yet another circle of friends who were younger and more tech savvy than yours truly. We'd get together a couple times a week to blow off steam. One time I missed an opportunity to smack down a rival bar trivia team once and for all and got flack for it the next day.
Friend--"Where were you last night?"
Me--"Um, at home watching the neighborhood cats fight for world domination on my patio. Why?"
Friend--"We needed you at trivia."
Me (thinking)--Hmm...must have been a Brady Bunch question for the win.
Me--"I didn't know we were going out."
Friend--"Didn't you see the post on Facebook?"
Me--"What's Facebook?"
Friend--"Oh."
That last question was met further with a "You poor, aging dear. You really must get with the times" sympathetic look. And so I joined Facebook.
For a while, it was a way to keep up with old friends as we all moved away from each other and got on with our lives. It was kind of cool seeing the baby shower photos without having to attend a god-awful-overly-saccharinized-cutesy-cutesy baby shower. (Just kidding, friends with kids.) Then family members started friending me and the whole thing went to pits. (Just kidding, family members...well, some of you, just kidding.) For all the flack that Facebook gets for being so 2000-and-late, it does offer a way to stay connected with the little people in my life. So I'll ignore the criticism and keep the connections open.
My next encounter with social media happened when I stumbled upon the online comment section. Holy cow, does this place offer up a gold mine of social data! You get a little bit of everything there: the under-thinking-over-linker (doesn't actually read the articles posted in replies), the exasperated citation hound (sighs and asks for evidence All. The. Time), the agreeable disagreer (likes to start posts with IMHO), the angry activist, the seen it/done it/heard it/said it/had it all commenter, the cut-n-paster, the troll and even the troll's troll. When I discovered this section on my favorite cable news host's blog, I began to wonder what I had done right so that I could keep on doing it. News, political commentary AND crazy talk on one page? What a bonus!
It wasn't long before I jumped on the band wagon and became the shoot-from-the-hip-emotionally-charged commenter. Heck, I even "met" my new BFFs through the spirited back-and-forth. I still think they are both potential serial killers, but hey, anyone who has the guts to sling ND smack talk at an anonymous Boilermaker must be worth a reply. And I like being surrounded by people who are smarter than me, even if it is in cyberspace.
As the culture shifted to the twitterverse, one of the aforementioned BFFs encouraged me to tweet. At first, I thought this was an invitation to disaster. I mean, high school was fun and all, but did I really want to jump into another engineered social strata? Did I want to be left pining over the cool kids' twitter banter? Where would I land in this uncharted world? Would I end up being that dolt with no followers? (Yes, actually.) Would my tweets fall on blind airwaves? (Computer says yes again!) Would I end up being that one knucklehead whose computer crashes after clicking on a spam tweet? (Mac user here, so we're good.)
But then I looked at it as an opportunity to branch out and do even deeper #socialresearch. If the online comment section was a gold mine, the twitterverse was a gold, diamond and rare-earth metal mine all in one! And so I became an accidental twit.
For those of you who don't tweet, let me break it down to a few key features. The main goal on twitter appears to be to get as many followers as possible. The more followers, the more clout you seem to have. I've actually seen insults (tweetsults?) thrown back at folks along the lines of "Who cares what you think? Oh, you and 53 followers!" As if your opinion isn't valid unless you have 1000+ "followers." (What are we? Ducks? Sheep? What?)
The next key feature is the #hashtag. If your tweet doesn't have a well-designed #, it'll likely float out into the twitterverse, never to be seen again. I have no idea what most of these mean. I'm still trying to figure out #p2. And I've yet to conclude if #tcot is meant for the most esteemed Conservatives, or Liberals making fun of the not-so-esteemed Conservatives. #Iactuallyliketorollentiretweetsintoonehashtagtocoverallmybases.
Another thing to notice is that when you first join twitter, you will have every small business in your city or neighborhood following you. My profile indicates that I am from Chicago, so naturally, I must be looking to purchase a luxurious condo in a newly refurbished building in the West Loop, since every real estate agent in the city who covers that territory follows me...Oh wait, I just lost a follower. Might be every real estate agent minus one.
The last key feature I want to mention is that twitter followers are like crack. The more you get, the more you want. You start begging, "Please, someone, follow me! I'll follow back, I swear! I'll even retweet your tweets. You don't even have to ask. I'll just set up an auto-retweeter and we're good to go." Knowing that in some cases, twitter is more about the gusto than the guts, there are folks who promise tons of followers if you just inch over to the dark side. Come on, try it. You know you want to get more followers. Think of how awesome it will be when your profile shows that you have 10K+ followers. Come on. Come get your followers. As it turns out, this can be quite a profitable industry as noted in a recent NYT article (H/T @ChrisBoese). Who knew? Obviously, not me, since I have to go back to my day job on Monday.
So, my curious social researching mind goaded me into doing a little experiment. For a few days, I followed some Follow Back team and retweeted a few tweets tagged with #TeamFollowBack. While I don't have my own little kingdom forming, I did gain about 10 followers in 3 days. I have no idea if that is a good or bad statistic, and I'm not sure if I care. Worth noting is that these 10 "followers" appear to be the fake followers noted in the above-linked article. Of the 10, at least 4 are modeling agencies or clients of modeling agencies. Now, I agree that I'm pretty darn cute, but I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea how my 5-foot-slightly-more-than-runt-inches frame and stocky legs would be so attractive to a modeling agency. Surely, it's not my nose that's tricking the world into believing that I'm in the market for a modeling gig.
The rest of my new followers may or may not be real people. And while I can't list Cilia Poon among my new brood, there is at least one with a very English sounding name followed by Chinese characters. Oh well. I'll take 'em, fake and all. If I lose the fake ones, what am I really out? As the great Joan Jett once sang, you've got nothing to lose when you lose fake friends.
But I digress. Again.
Anywho, I had moved on to another phase in life that was met with yet another circle of friends who were younger and more tech savvy than yours truly. We'd get together a couple times a week to blow off steam. One time I missed an opportunity to smack down a rival bar trivia team once and for all and got flack for it the next day.
Friend--"Where were you last night?"
Me--"Um, at home watching the neighborhood cats fight for world domination on my patio. Why?"
Friend--"We needed you at trivia."
Me (thinking)--Hmm...must have been a Brady Bunch question for the win.
Me--"I didn't know we were going out."
Friend--"Didn't you see the post on Facebook?"
Me--"What's Facebook?"
Friend--"Oh."
That last question was met further with a "You poor, aging dear. You really must get with the times" sympathetic look. And so I joined Facebook.
For a while, it was a way to keep up with old friends as we all moved away from each other and got on with our lives. It was kind of cool seeing the baby shower photos without having to attend a god-awful-overly-saccharinized-cutesy-cutesy baby shower. (Just kidding, friends with kids.) Then family members started friending me and the whole thing went to pits. (Just kidding, family members...well, some of you, just kidding.) For all the flack that Facebook gets for being so 2000-and-late, it does offer a way to stay connected with the little people in my life. So I'll ignore the criticism and keep the connections open.
My next encounter with social media happened when I stumbled upon the online comment section. Holy cow, does this place offer up a gold mine of social data! You get a little bit of everything there: the under-thinking-over-linker (doesn't actually read the articles posted in replies), the exasperated citation hound (sighs and asks for evidence All. The. Time), the agreeable disagreer (likes to start posts with IMHO), the angry activist, the seen it/done it/heard it/said it/had it all commenter, the cut-n-paster, the troll and even the troll's troll. When I discovered this section on my favorite cable news host's blog, I began to wonder what I had done right so that I could keep on doing it. News, political commentary AND crazy talk on one page? What a bonus!
It wasn't long before I jumped on the band wagon and became the shoot-from-the-hip-emotionally-charged commenter. Heck, I even "met" my new BFFs through the spirited back-and-forth. I still think they are both potential serial killers, but hey, anyone who has the guts to sling ND smack talk at an anonymous Boilermaker must be worth a reply. And I like being surrounded by people who are smarter than me, even if it is in cyberspace.
As the culture shifted to the twitterverse, one of the aforementioned BFFs encouraged me to tweet. At first, I thought this was an invitation to disaster. I mean, high school was fun and all, but did I really want to jump into another engineered social strata? Did I want to be left pining over the cool kids' twitter banter? Where would I land in this uncharted world? Would I end up being that dolt with no followers? (Yes, actually.) Would my tweets fall on blind airwaves? (Computer says yes again!) Would I end up being that one knucklehead whose computer crashes after clicking on a spam tweet? (Mac user here, so we're good.)
But then I looked at it as an opportunity to branch out and do even deeper #socialresearch. If the online comment section was a gold mine, the twitterverse was a gold, diamond and rare-earth metal mine all in one! And so I became an accidental twit.
For those of you who don't tweet, let me break it down to a few key features. The main goal on twitter appears to be to get as many followers as possible. The more followers, the more clout you seem to have. I've actually seen insults (tweetsults?) thrown back at folks along the lines of "Who cares what you think? Oh, you and 53 followers!" As if your opinion isn't valid unless you have 1000+ "followers." (What are we? Ducks? Sheep? What?)
The next key feature is the #hashtag. If your tweet doesn't have a well-designed #, it'll likely float out into the twitterverse, never to be seen again. I have no idea what most of these mean. I'm still trying to figure out #p2. And I've yet to conclude if #tcot is meant for the most esteemed Conservatives, or Liberals making fun of the not-so-esteemed Conservatives. #Iactuallyliketorollentiretweetsintoonehashtagtocoverallmybases.
Another thing to notice is that when you first join twitter, you will have every small business in your city or neighborhood following you. My profile indicates that I am from Chicago, so naturally, I must be looking to purchase a luxurious condo in a newly refurbished building in the West Loop, since every real estate agent in the city who covers that territory follows me...Oh wait, I just lost a follower. Might be every real estate agent minus one.
The last key feature I want to mention is that twitter followers are like crack. The more you get, the more you want. You start begging, "Please, someone, follow me! I'll follow back, I swear! I'll even retweet your tweets. You don't even have to ask. I'll just set up an auto-retweeter and we're good to go." Knowing that in some cases, twitter is more about the gusto than the guts, there are folks who promise tons of followers if you just inch over to the dark side. Come on, try it. You know you want to get more followers. Think of how awesome it will be when your profile shows that you have 10K+ followers. Come on. Come get your followers. As it turns out, this can be quite a profitable industry as noted in a recent NYT article (H/T @ChrisBoese). Who knew? Obviously, not me, since I have to go back to my day job on Monday.
So, my curious social researching mind goaded me into doing a little experiment. For a few days, I followed some Follow Back team and retweeted a few tweets tagged with #TeamFollowBack. While I don't have my own little kingdom forming, I did gain about 10 followers in 3 days. I have no idea if that is a good or bad statistic, and I'm not sure if I care. Worth noting is that these 10 "followers" appear to be the fake followers noted in the above-linked article. Of the 10, at least 4 are modeling agencies or clients of modeling agencies. Now, I agree that I'm pretty darn cute, but I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea how my 5-foot-slightly-more-than-runt-inches frame and stocky legs would be so attractive to a modeling agency. Surely, it's not my nose that's tricking the world into believing that I'm in the market for a modeling gig.
The rest of my new followers may or may not be real people. And while I can't list Cilia Poon among my new brood, there is at least one with a very English sounding name followed by Chinese characters. Oh well. I'll take 'em, fake and all. If I lose the fake ones, what am I really out? As the great Joan Jett once sang, you've got nothing to lose when you lose fake friends.