FW Social Media

This appeared to be the tag on an email I received this afternoon. “Wow,” I thought, “after all this time, someone had finally found out God’s email address and is passing it around, perhaps with an admonition not to break the chain or you will be struck dead by lighting.” On closer inspection, the email turned out to be tagged “submit your questions for the Golden Globes” a much less interesting proposal, since I barely know what the Golden Globes are.

I was so disappointed. I do have a few questions to ask God about. Some of them, not surprisingly, I can’t publish. But I think I could come up with a few that aren’t too personal:

Dear God, why won’t you just let us reach our goals and have some peace?

Is it really fair that those we love are free not to care about us in the least?

Why are there so many bad people in the world, anyway?

I mean, couldn’t we have gotten by with only about half the current number?

Could you at least get rid of half the bad people in my life?

And finally, could you just put to bed the question about whether there are dogs in heaven or not?

How about you, readers? Do you believe God may have an email address somewhere? If he does, do you think he had it ten years ago, before everyone else, or do you think he was a late adopter? Do you have any questions you’d like to ask God? If you do, would you dare to put them in the comments below?

Written by Kristen Escovedo

I’ve met many women who tell me that the reason they spend so much time sitting across the table from uninteresting men, laughing at jokes that aren’t funny and eating a dinner salad when what they really want is a big juicy steak topped with bacon with a side of bacon is that these dates, no matter how horrid, help them create a checklist of they are looking for in a mate.

Is he the one? Or should you send him packing?

- Bob may have been obnoxious but he had great teeth.

- Seth had bad breath but he held the door open for me.

- Tyler slurped his soup, talked about his ex-girlfriends all night, tried to grab my breasts when we got in the car, and ate my cucumbers, but he has a job.

- James dresses great, talks to his mom three times a week, loves musical theater, has never been married, offered to take me shopping, give me a make-over, and set his roommate Brian up with my best friend . . . wait a minute.

I view dating from a different perspective. I believe dating allows you to create a list of things that you don’t want in a life-long mate. Once you find someone who doesn’t match that list, you know he (or she) is the one.

Since this may be a new concept for you, let me illustrate with my personal example. Other than my husband, I’ll use descriptors rather than names. However, it is important to keep a couple of things in mind.

- These examples are 10-15 years ago (I was very young when I started dating).
- Most importantly, just because I (or you) place something on this type of list, it does not make the associated person bad or flawed (barring physical or verbal abuse). It just means they weren’t The One. When it comes down to it, most of my ex’s could list a flaw or two of mine (I’m not eliciting a challenge).

The Things I Didn’t Want In The One – As Learned From My Ex-boyfriends

- High School Obsession – Drank too much.
- Long Term High School Boyfriend – Didn’t get my sense of humor.
- Short Term College Boyfriend –More interested in my body than my mind.
- Long Term College Boyfriend – Wanted me to be a mild mannered, size 4, blond, Southern Baptist vegetarian.

Then I met Richie and he wasn’t all of the things I didn’t want.

We met in college, so I won’t tell you we didn’t enjoy a few cocktails on occasion, but there were distinct differences between him and my High School Obsession. First, he was 21 not 17. Second, he knew the difference between having a drink, and drinking to get drunk.

Not only did he get and appreciate my sense of humor, he made me laugh.

Richie and I both majored in Communication Studies, which provided a common interest, but even outside the academic realm there never seemed to be a shortage of areas for discussion. I won’t say he wasn’t interested in my body, but he always respected my decision to wait until I was married to have sex.

Richie and I were friends before we started dating, which has its advantages, one of which is by the time we started dating he had already seen the real me. The loud, silly, bacon loving, frizzy haired, charismatic, size 8. That is the girl he fell in love with.

The advantage to creating a checklist of traits you don’t want as opposed to a never-ending list of must haves is that you enable yourself to see your potential mate for who they really are and not who you want to make them into. Because the truth is, as much as you may believe you can, you cannot change another person, no matter how much you love them or how much they love you. That is why, whatever your expectations, if a potential partner does not meet them, you will both be much happier if you cut your losses and move on than if you spend the next ten years trying to change that person. I tell you that as someone who spent three years a very miserable size four, blond vegetarian.

But, then it happens! You find someone who isn’t all the things you don’t want. It may be someone you have known for years or it may be someone you just met. All you know is that this is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. And you should. Because when you know, you know. And when that happens, I promise, you won’t need to date one more person to figure it out. Because your list will be complete.

How did you know he or she was The One? Share your thoughts.

Kristen Escovedo is a writer, a communications pro, a wife and a mommy of two. Her blog, The Waiting Room is a place where all these varied aspects of her life come together as she takes a look at life from its various Waiting Rooms ranging from the silly to the poignant. Follow her on Twitter @kescovedo.

Okay, my friends, the twitter statisticians and rule makers have finally gotten me a little hot under the collar. They have now defined “status updates,” where you tell what you are doing on Twitter, i.e. “I am watching my teenage sons struggle against their father for the TV remote control,” as “pointless babble.”

Attention Pear Analytics, “status updates” are what Twitter was born doing, and, albeit that these days status updates have slipped to being the minority of tweets (41%) they are not “mindless babble,” they are the core of Twitter’s meaning. Like phonics being necessary before a child can read, status updates are needed before you learn to retweet, reply, link and network. Beginning twitterers use them a lot, and experienced twitterers too like to say what they are doing, too, as long as it’s perceived as funny and relevant.

Okay, now that I’ve calmed down (you see, I make a lot of status updates, and so the idea that my tweets are “mindless babble” was bound to get me going) here  is the  breakdown of the Pear Analytics research on types of Tweets:

“Pointless babble “40.55%

Conversational 37.55%,

Pass-Along Value  8.7%

Self-promotion 5.8%

Spam 3.7%

News 3.6%

The news story: Twitter Filled with “Pointless Babble.”

The entire white paper from Pear Analytics (this is actually a great resource which answers a number of questions, such as the proportion of “dead” (or inactive) accounts.

So you want to be followed by tens of thousands of people on Twitter? There are no guarantees, of course, but  I’ve assessed the potential for this, and I’ve noticed these characteristics of highly successful twitterers.

1) They develop and hone a unique persona.

2) They tweet a lot — at least 20 posts a day, sometimes much more.

3) They talk to others (@ message) constantly. When a new person @messages them, they really try to answer.

4) They use hyperlinks relatively infrequently.

5) They keep it positive, positive, positive.

6) Or they’re a celebrity. If you’re a celebrity, all bets are off.  I follow @DavidLynch, he almost never says anything, I don’t know if he writes his own tweets, but it’s kindof cool to follow him, he doesn’t need to prove himself on twitter, he just has to show up.

Okay, I know I shouldn’t write about Twitter two days out of three. But this really concerned me, which just goes to show how off-balance my priorities really are. Recently, @AnnWylie wrote a short piece in her PR/Writing newsletter titled “How to Make Your Tweets More Useful.” And it included (along with the very interesting information that the biggest day for tweeting is Tueday) an explanation of @AngelaMaier‘s 70-20-10 rule, which recommends that:

70 percent of your tweets share resources — blog postings, articles, opinions and tools
20 percent of your tweets engage in conversations and connections
10 percent of your tweets “chirp,” or chat about yourself, your life and your thoughts.

Well, no wonder I am not the ultimate twitter goddess that I thought I could be, because this is not what I’ve been doing. My scores, which I just got by counting my last 20 posts on Tweetdeck, are more like:

1) 15% share resources
2) 60% engage in conversation
3) 25% updates on what I am doing.

When I see articles like this one, I always think “so this is why my “All Friends” column on Tweetdeck is just one long rippling thread of hyperlinks and @tags. There’s precious little real message left in our SMS-based system. And even though my browser is pretty quick (since I bought the used iMac from @PeteWann) I don’t have time to click all those links. I don’t even have time to process what they’re about.

I don’t go to twitter looking for articles, I go looking for people, for personality. Also, I’m looking for freedom and the surprising. Maybe it’s just me, but when I hear “Twitter rules” I reach for my gun.

I’m not alone in this. Back in January @ChrisBrogan wrote the post “You’re doing it all wrong?” where he does a complete send-up of the idea that twitter can even have “rules.” I mean, yes, you can make a list of ideas on how to tweeet and call them “rules.” But really they’re only suggestions, guidelines. One of the big things about Twitter, I believe, is that there are no rules.

There are a lot of different types on twitter (I wrote this blog post pointing out a short list of some of the major ones) and each has their own formula of tweet balance. There are some tweeps who are more than anything else like a morning DJ, blasting out news and notes from the scandalous to the profane. Others go on all day chatting with friends. Some really do give updates on what they are doing. Is this okay? With me, it’s okay. I feel you have to work out your twitter identity with fear and trembling.

As for me, I might not be doing twitter right, because after a year I don’t have tens of thousands of followers. But I have enjoyed it a great deal and met some pretty neat folks. That’s good enough for me, for now.

For the Uninitiated: Twitter is a social media application where you can post mini-updates and view the updates of others. People who have been doing it a while sometimes have thousands of followers. Many who wish to have a large following have in the past followed everyone who follows them, sometimes automatically. It’s a friendly thing to do, and you don’t have to read everyone’s updates. In fact, after you start following more than 50 or so people, there’s basically no way you can.  At that point you either take pot luck or go on TweetDeck, an application for the Twitter application, and construct a list of the people you’re really, really following — your “inner circle” as @DaivRawks would call it, or your “crew” as @BillCammack would say. Meanwhile, if anyone from the greater group wants you, they can either @message you — send you a public “hey remember me?” call — or they can send you a direct message (DM), which is private.

And Now the Main Story:

The problem is with the DM’s. Increasingly, Twitter is becoming attractive to people who are trying to sell stuff. And increasingly, these types add you, you innocently and as a friendly gesture add back, and they send you a DM promoting their services. This is particularly a problem for users who access Twitter via cell phone SMS, because the commercial DM’s are blowing out their inboxes. For the rest of us, they’re just a garden variety iritation, which becomes worse and worse the more of the things you get.

Anyway, last week social media guru and prince @ChrisBrogan, who is followed by something like a 100,000 people, threw down the gauntlet. No more auto-following. The DM’s were just too out of control.

It was interesting to me when I read it, because quietly and undramatically and not followed by nearly six figures of people (last Twitter count was 1450 or so followers, many of whom I suspect are no longer reading my updates and which inevitably contains some MLM people and the like) I had come to the same conclusion. Thankfully, now twitter gives you a mini-profile on everyone who appears on your followers list. Instead of auto-following people, I go down the line, check out their location, their avatar, their bio and their latest tweet, and I can usually tell if they’re a spammer or not.

For a lower-volume user like me, it works. @ChrisBrogan, on the other hand, has had to resort to requesting that those who are legit @message him if they want him to follow back. But mine is a human system, so it’s not failproof. Imaging my irritation when someone I had hand-followed shot back an instant DM last week:

“Check us out at blahblahblah.com  for stunning marketing solutions … we can and do help people just like you … “

Oops. Looks like I’ve had a Personally-Administered Twitter Adding System error. Only remedy? Hand-Unfollow. Okay. All better now. See the rest of you soon.

Back in the day, you could say anything on your blog, in a chat room, or where ever on the web and it wouldn’t matter because you were the only person you knew who had “internets” or whatever they called this thing. In 1998 I was the first one to have email in my family. Actually, it was my husband, who got it in a package along with grad school and kindly let me share his account. Eventually, I got my own account … a Netscape  one … yeah, it was a while ago. I had a website where I published articles which virtually no one ever read but the good part was I could say whatever I wanted without fear of reprecussions.

That was then. Now, there’s no privacy on the web anymore. Now, everytime I turn around someone is asking to add me on FaceBook or following my Twitter stream and with about 2000 unique visitors a month here at this site, there’s no way of knowing which of my arch-enemies are reading this and making notes of my typos.

Back then, I could shoot off my mouth at will, on a website, blog, or any portion of cyberspace, and never worry that someone from my family or from work, or from anywhere, really, was going to read what I wrote and, more importantly, associate my virtual web words with a real flesh and blood person, me, who was sitting across from them at an actual wood table. I could complain about anyone, anything, anywhere, and it would never get back to anybody. The web was my virtual confessional.

Eventually, my parents got on the web and my dad started reading my blog, but since I didn’t have any fights with him at the time that didn’t matter. Now, however, it’s pretty safe to say that everyone is on the web, with the exception of those too young to read, and, overall, you are never safe complaining about some member of the immediate or extended family, friends, or people at work, and feeling safe that they won’t find out. Probably they will. They follow you on FaceBook, they get your Twitter updates.

I heard that my ex-husband’s wife followed my blog and my twitter account, but that was okay … whatever she found there, she probably didn’t like me anyway, deep down, so what did I care? But the gig was finally up when I put a rant on my old blog, The Kids are All Right, about a member of the extended family — and she read it. The next time I was over at her house, huge innuendos were dropped like size 12 shoes about my blog, and how many people read it, and various other allusions to what I’d written.

Drat, I thought, I can no longer vent on the web. Mea Culpa. As I said, the web is not a safe place.

You heard it here first.  Writing “Uncle George has really really ugly green golf pants that make me want to throw up” will seriously put you at risk for, next time you see Uncle G., him asking, “don’t like my golf pants?”

I’ve thought of changing my avatar, my alias, my byline — but it’s too late. Everyone knows where I am and I’ve worked for almost a year building up the name recognition, etc. for this site and I’m not going to do it again. I’m going to have to do this the old fashioned way from here on out, and watch what I say.

I’m sorry people, but the days of digital freedom are over.

Last Sunday, a young woman known to the local twitter network as @megapixel, Meg Porter, died in a car accident. Her blog was Mind of Meg, hosted with Blogger. She was known in particular for vlogging, video blogging, in which she spoke to the computer screen as if it were a casual friend, and gave her thoughts on some subject, such as changing her hair. She was just 24 years old.

The news story:  Burleson Woman Killed in Head-On Collision. And also there is a short obituary with a guestbook signed by many, including friends from twitter.

On You Tube, she sang an a capela rendition of “Killing me Softly.” Danny Brown wrote a reflection on his blog about her passing.

Her last twitter update spoke only of an irritating case of strep throat. As the news leaked out over the twitterspere, ourpourings of sympathy rebounded. The shock was palpable — if you’re on twitter, you can read the thread on the topic by searching for @megapixel.

May she rest in peace — and be remembered. Truly we know not the day nor the hour.

A  story on the Atlantic Monthly’s website states that the Washington Post was outted yesterday for trying to sell access to Obama administration officials and the Washington Post’s own writers to lobbyists for $25,000 per seat.  I was glad to hear that my suspicions about the impaired impartiality of modern newspapers were right on target, and overall feel this affirms my several-years-old decision to let go of reading traditional newspapers and go to online sources.

I have always been one who likes to read the news, instead of watching it. But at some point in the past five years, we stopped taking the paper. It cost a lot of money, and I wasn’t sure it was really impartial. The only short-term cost was I was kept out out of knowing much about fires, explosions and car accidents in the local community. But as time went on, my life changed very little from stopping the paper feed. Except every once in a while a big story would blow in and I would left out.  I knew this “see no evil” approach to the news was not a lifetime solution.

I have instead adapted a new system of getting the news effectively, relatively impartially, and for free. It is foolproof? No. but I’m not sure I’m less well informed than I was years ago. My three step method to news aquisition is:

1. I read my twitter feed for about 15 minutes a day. If there’s anything really important going on I’ll hear about it. Meanwhile, I also pick up an ecclectic mix of blog articles from links on twitter and hear some outside voices that I wouldn’t know about if it weren’t for the internet.

2. I read the top story on Yahoo news. If something interests me, I search for it there. I spend about 5 minutes a day reading Yahoo news, on average. I find it to be very well suited to my needs — decently researched and respectably written. The bias I had become used to in newspaper journalism seems to be absent. I’m hoping, anyway.

3. My mother and daughter send me articles from the New York Times. I spend about 10 minutes a week reading these stories. This insures that I get some exposure to top-ranked modern journalism, and since Mom and Daughter are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, I feel I am getting a balanced ledger of news from various viewpoints.

In this way I stay informed about various trends in the country and in the community. Actually, I have to say I think I’m better informed than I was from reading one paper, and certainly more than I would be from watching TV news.

So you’ve started using the twitter social networking site and you’re tweeting regularly. Suddenly you’re deluged with different kinds of twitter messages from people you’ve added back  and you don’t know what they all mean? It’s not as confusing as it seems. There are actually only so many types you’ll meet on twitter, and it will help if you know what they are:

Multi Level Marketers – you will know them immediately by the DM’s about making money or looking for “investors.” Run, don’t walk.

Parents at home — A lot of jokes about the trials of having small children.

Pet people – Animal lovers, bond together! Speak in the voice of your pet! Make jokes about “my human”  or “the two-legged creature!” Twitter can be a pet paradise where animals finally get their voice.

Newswire services — often focused on a region or topic. These are usually great until you read about some appalling violent crime that you didn’t know about and you wish that you still didn’t, and it happened in your area, not in Dallas, which doesn’t have anything to do with us here and anyway,  anything can happen in Dallas.

Publically PR people — usually sane and witty. For whatever reason, they don’t generally tweet about work. Though some will blog about it.

Privately PR people – this is those celebrity tweeters that are actually written by a ghost writer. You won’t be able to recognize them, generally, unless you pay close attention. But if someone says he’s the Dalai Lama, be aware –it’s possible that the Lama takes time off from meditating to tweet, but it’s more likely  some freelancer in LA who’s got a publicity gig. Or it’s a complete fake, that’s happened too.  If he DM’s you and wants to offer you a great way to make money, again, run don’t walk.

Writers — often looking for an agent, working on a novel, or slumming as copywriters. Or already wrote a book and trying to promote it.  Or they’re a really  sucessful writer and they’re tweeting because their agent said they have to. In that case they’re not really “into” it. Yet. But they will be. Soon. They promise.

Professionals who are networking — could be teachers, engineers, headhunters (oh I mean corporate recruiters, sorry) or anyone who can derive professional benefit from meeting others in their field.  Or other fields.

High Techies — their tweets make zero sense to me, because I don’t know how to “code.” However, they are some of the best tweeters to know, because they can help you when you’re buying a computer or fixing up your WordPress site.  Just explain first that you don’t know the lingo.

Drunks – Unlike the high-techies, these tweets half make sense and often use bad language. They can be funny but you might want to be careful about following if you have children who are big enough to read your tweetdeck board, as I do.

People with a Political Ax to Grind — there aren’t as many of these as you’d expect, but they’re out there. Take it with a grain of salt — much political writing isn’t very well thought out, but when you take a few seconds to write a tweet, it’s even more casually constructed. Perhaps they didn’t mean it. They’re probably nice people.  Really. Even if you don’t agree with them. But if it goes on too long, yes, you may want to unfollow.

Exhibitionists with really cool lives, whose twitter job is to make you worry about why they’re always in some foreign country on the beach, and you’re at work, and they just go from one exciting adventure to another. If you need proof that life is not fair, this is it.

There are probably more types, but there are the main ones I’ve seen. Twitter gives you the world at your feet — the good, the bad, the ugly, and those who won’t be quiet. Feel free to add any other types you’ve met in the “comments” section … I’d love to hear if there’s someone I’ve missed!