In real life, I started my social media career with Yahoo many moons ago. At that time, there was nothing but a bunch of people communicating online in chat rooms and/or pseudo social media such as Yahoo's Geocities.
Remember Geocities? That was a place where I spent many hours writing and posting about my real life company. So many of my email addresses were written down in so many vanity books. There was Yahoo, of course. Google, Blogger, Twitter, Flickr, Ning, Squidoo, and so many others, that I have no memory of being in them except for the notation in those little vanity books.
When Google decided to protect us from unscrupulous bloggers, posters, and that ilk, I just was not properly prepared, even though I knew integration was coming! I had to gather a few years of user names, passwords, secret questions and locations. Trying to integrate the real world company and the virtual world avatar, was a nightmare.
So I walked away from all of the techno muck for a couple of years.
My mind was a blur of words, photos, updates, and BS. The world has definitely changed both in virtual and real. The internet has become such a spooky boogyman. The "Monster" knows everything about us. Being fully integrated is kinda worrisome as it means that a hack can literally destroy everything.
What all of us created was a syncopated world of blogging/posting platforms. Majority of the 'stuff' is so not important to anyone. Just words and pics floating like flotsam in the wind with everyone sharing them. And, that's the real reason why social media is important. The act of sharing them.
When you share with your next door neighbor, an overwhelming feeling of comfort may envelope you. Why? You connected with a person soley with a plate of cookies. That person may share that plate of food with another person close by. Then, that other person may tell their baker down the street how awesome your cookies were to eat. And voila! That baker contacted you about a special event where he wanted someone to make cookies!
What I hope is that this simply created avatar, my precious jewel, can continue her virtual life peacefully with grace and dignity. So many great new things, like mesh, have happened on the grid. I am also definitely looking forward to being able to access the grid with my cell phone.
2014 will go down in my memory book as the year that I took care of my avie, and all the other loose ends on the net.
Spring is coming... time to go shopping for my avatar!
Making my way through social media... again!
Posted by raftwet jewell
Photo by raftwet jewell
