Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Why Are We Here?

Oh, don't worry, not getting terribly existential here.  I just meant here, on the internet.  Possibly even here, you know, right here.  Personally, I like being entertained, and I think the internet is good at that.  I like being informed and the internet is good at that.  (Yes, you have to sometimes be careful, but really, that's true wherever you get your information.)
As more and more people come to check out this newfangled internet thing, some of them seem confused.  (In fairness, there have been confused people all along, there are just more of them now.)  Some people think if I follow them on Twitter, what I really meant was not entertain me with your various tweets, but send me a message reminding me that you have a [insert product here] and that I should GO BUY it RIGHT NOW. (They use the caps, okay, not me.)  Or that they should whine because they said or did this thing and now they have less followers.  (I swear, every time someone posts that, I am tempted to unfollow them right then.) 
And some people seem to think that because there is Facebook and My Space and Twitter and Tumblr and [all the other things] they should get on every single one.  But then, it's really hard to some up with twelve really cool things to tell people, so instead they will tell people the exact same thing in all twelve places.  Those people I do unfollow, or unfriend, or what have you, I don't need the message twelve times.  If that's how you choose to use your social media, I probably don't need to socialize with you too much.  (I may, if the message itself is interesting, need it once.  However if the message was just, "Buy my things!", well, I'm good.)
So, I really appreciate seeing people talk about better ways to do it, even if it is to say that I'm pretty sure that doing X or Y, is bad, what would you people suggest.  So, we have Jennifer Crusie here, talking about the difference between buzz and hype. (And asking people stuff.) And Maureen Johnson with her Manifesto of not being a brand. And Alison Kent talking about how social media is, you know, social.