Socially Yours, Allan
Some thoughts about social media!
I joined Facebook shortly after it opened to the general public in 2007 (yes Irene, I do realize that it was officially opened in 2004, but back then you needed to be a student!).
Since then it’s grown to such an extent, that it’s changed the way people interact online.
As of late 2015 there were over 1.6 billion people on Facebook.
To put that in perspective, there are about 7.4 billion people alive on the planet today
Earlier today I was looking back at how things have changed over the years, and where my online friends are today.
Sadly, as happens on an all too regular basis, some have passed away, while others are just too busy to post much.
I trimmed my “friends list” back a couple of years ago, simply because I really couldn’t interact with that number of people (up to around 1,000 at one stage).
Originally, I joined as a business networker, but as the platform gained popularity, I became online friends with family and offline friends as well.
I have often thought of setting up a business page there and will definitely get around to it one day (round toits are hard to find here at the best of times).
Setting up a business page isn’t difficult, I’ve done it before for businesses and a charity concern.
My problem is maintaining another “profile”.
Social networking needs a lot of commitment to do properly though, and I wouldn’t like to put so much time into it that I neglected family and friends off line!
Linkedin is more for business networking!
I must say that I do find their site a little bit more difficult to navigate for some reason.
Somehow, when I accept some invitations to accept a connection, I receive the same message again.
Not sure what happens there, but I do wish that they would fix it.
There is a lot more activity on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and one would imagine that most people would rather be active where stuff happens.
Having an audience to broadcast to is fine, but in the end, that is not what social media is about.
Interaction, giving and receiving is what its about here, the same as any in relationship, except that it’s online!
Have you ever done business, or interacted with anyone on Linkedin?
I joined Twitter in 2007
Many of my friends from Facebook are there, but I do tend to interact differently than on other sites.
I’m not there nearly as often as I used to be.
Again, time is very important to me, and I am always trying to balance work, friends and family, sometimes successfully, often times not.
Being constantly active on social media is a big time waster, so unless I have a specific purpose for being there, Twitter doesn’t get a lot of my attention.
Mind you, it does get more than Linkedin, simply because there’s more going on there!
For a while, Plurk looked as though it was going to be a contender for Twitter’s crown in the 140 character message stakes, but it is relatively quiet as well now!
Such is the competition for numbers these days in the social networking department that you really need to be ahead of the curve, and develop new ideas before competitors can get traction.
Unfortunately, Plurk failed in this regard, and as nice as the people that I know there are, I find it hard to make Plurk a “must visit site”.
Which brings us to Google Plus.
G+ is Google’s fourth foray into social media, others have included Google Buzz, and Orkut. Despite a lot of doomsayers predictions, G+ hasn’t gone the way of its predecessors, and I hope that it doesn’t.
While I don’t spend as much time here as on Facebook, I do have a lot of friends there that are not on FB, and so I make a point of checking in at least a couple of times a week.
I’m a member of a few groups on that site, as well as running one myself (Video CreativeFX).
There’s a lot of creative stuff happens here, and information is easy to source without a lot of the distractions that “happen” on the other sites.
That’s one of the reasons that I hope that the site doesn’t get closed down.
The fact is that it is different to Facebook, Twitter and so on, and it should work on that difference, creating its own market than trying to nab Facebook’s share.
I could go on about Snapchat, Pinterest and so on, but although I am a member on those, and other sites, I just don’t get there very often at all!
What about you?
Where do you hang out online? What do you like about the site, and why?
What type of people do you hang out with?
I’ve met a lot of people online, and many, sometimes most, have opposing views to me.
Somehow I’ve been able to handle relationships without stepping on their toes too much, and learned to ignore stuff that I don’t like.
Video CreativeFX is a great place to hangout and learn more about video. Skill levels range from beginner to professional, and that’s what makes it a great place to learn.
It’s been a little quiet of late, but that means that you pick through the stuff that’s been shared, with posts about video editing, images, cartooning and more.
All the images on this post are linked to my profiles on these sites. Feel free to follow the links and meet me there.
The last image of course is linked to Video CreativeFX of course.
One last link to share and that’s for my young mate Connor!
I work with his Mum, and in 2014, Connor was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.
After finishing his treatment last year, Connor and his family decided to give something back by contributing to research on childhood cancers.
Over the past year or so they have raised thousands of dollars for the cause.
While you may not be able to contribute financially, simply liking his page would be a great encouragement to them!
Socially Yours, Allan!