A Foray into Online Social Networking

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(Ivy Bean, at 102, she is the oldest person on Facebook!)

I’m slowly venturing into the somewhat confusing (to me anyway) world of online social networking. This week I joined Twitter, which is fun. At this point, I’m not following so many people that it is distracting. After setting up my Twitter profile I ran through all of the 80+ blogs that I keep up with regularly and followed the handful who said they had a Twitter account. A few other people materialized to follow me. Twitter, if you are not familiar with it, is a way to post a short, 140-character maximum, message, which broadcasts to whoever is following you. You can let people know about a new blog post on your site, you can let people know about something interesting you found on another site, you can let people know what you had for breakfast. It’s interesting that, although I’ve been reading some of my Twitter people’s blogs for months, the instant I began communicating with them on Twitter, I felt like I had a more personal relationship with them. I assume this is the real power of Twitter. My primary employer saw a story Fox News had picked up saying terrorists were using Twitter. I’m sure he’d be horrified to know I had signed up! After a little investigating I found the actual report, which really said that social networking in general could be used by terrorists for quick communication. In any event, it’s a neat idea (Twitter, not the terrorists!). If you are on Twitter and would like to follow me, my Twitter name is, of course, SimplyForties, or you can click on the follow me button with the little birdie in the right-hand column on my site. I promise not to tell you what I had for breakfast!

My other entré into the world of social networking this week was to set up a page on Facebook. To me, Facebook was something for kids, as my knowledge of it came from my son. Once upon a time you had to have a college e-mail address in order to set up a Facebook profile. Then it was opened up for high school students and now, evidently, it’s for everyone. I’m not sure how it came up but my younger sister mentioned to me that she had a Facebook page and that several members of her church had one as well. She encouraged me to make one. Right now all my “friends” consist of people with the same last name as mine! There are groups on Facebook that you can join, which presumably are designed to help you find people with similar interests to yours. I browsed around a little and was greatly amused to find a group related to throwing middle-aged people off of Facebook! My sister found lots of people from her church and from various places where she used to live and with whom she was able to reconnect. I don’t belong to any groups like that and have lived in the same tiny town for 30 years. I’m not sure Facebook is going to do anything for me as I have other, more conventional ways of keeping up with my family but I’m going to hang out there for awhile and see what happens.

Although I don’t understand it, I do Stumble because it’s a fun way to waste time on the Internet. I get Tip’d and I think Digg operates the same way. I’m fairly active on Blog Catalog and TBD. I’m sure all of these sites have a vast amount more to them than I take advantage of or even know about.

What about you? Are you signed up for social networking? What use are you making of it and are you happy with the results?