Social networking
a few observations on social networking...
despite my advanced age - 63 - i've generally been and continue to be pretty much up on the latest electronic media and related gadgets... i guess it's a necessity in my line of work where i regularly find myself based for weeks at a time in a wide variety of countries spread across several continents and both northern and southern hemispheres... if i wasn't up on the communication opportunities provided by the internet, i would essentially be up shit creek...
i started this weblog almost six years ago in 2005, a bit behind the pioneers but ahead of many, including most of my peers who, at that time, didn't know a blog from their left cheek...
i put the blog on twitter almost a year ago, so all my blog posts are automatically tweeted but, other than that, i haven't paid much attention to twitter... i've avoided facebook like the plague, i guess because it seems just a little bit too sorority/fraternity-esque for my taste and, at this particular point, i will probably continue to stay away... in truth, the whole notion of "social" in the "social networking" concept leaves me cold...
so, imagine my surprise when i, for no other reason than simple curiosity, started following my twitter home page in mid-january, just prior to leaving for my current assignment here in kosovo... just remembering to bring up my twitter home page required, as you can imagine, a shift in my ingrained web surfing habits, and, once i got into the habit of regularly bringing it up, i initially wasn't overly impressed... yeah, i added some interesting people to follow - glenn greenwald, emptywheel, greg mitchell, and the like - and was interested to see that their tweets often reinforced and amplified their longer pieces i was accustomed to reading in salon and the nation, but nothing in their various tweets struck me as significantly more valuable than what i was accustomed to following on the more traditional sites...
that all changed with the events in tunisia and egypt... what i am experiencing now is the full-blown immediacy of being on the front lines of a major world event in a way that the traditional news media or even the alternative internet news media couldn't possibly deliver... reading the tweets from sharifkouddous, a native egyptian who is tweeting and broadcasting live for democracy now from cairo adds a three-dimensionality to the goings-on that is breathtaking... i now see "social networking," at least the twitter variety, from a completely new perspective and i'm in awe of its power...
ok... i'm a convert...
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despite my advanced age - 63 - i've generally been and continue to be pretty much up on the latest electronic media and related gadgets... i guess it's a necessity in my line of work where i regularly find myself based for weeks at a time in a wide variety of countries spread across several continents and both northern and southern hemispheres... if i wasn't up on the communication opportunities provided by the internet, i would essentially be up shit creek...
i started this weblog almost six years ago in 2005, a bit behind the pioneers but ahead of many, including most of my peers who, at that time, didn't know a blog from their left cheek...
i put the blog on twitter almost a year ago, so all my blog posts are automatically tweeted but, other than that, i haven't paid much attention to twitter... i've avoided facebook like the plague, i guess because it seems just a little bit too sorority/fraternity-esque for my taste and, at this particular point, i will probably continue to stay away... in truth, the whole notion of "social" in the "social networking" concept leaves me cold...
so, imagine my surprise when i, for no other reason than simple curiosity, started following my twitter home page in mid-january, just prior to leaving for my current assignment here in kosovo... just remembering to bring up my twitter home page required, as you can imagine, a shift in my ingrained web surfing habits, and, once i got into the habit of regularly bringing it up, i initially wasn't overly impressed... yeah, i added some interesting people to follow - glenn greenwald, emptywheel, greg mitchell, and the like - and was interested to see that their tweets often reinforced and amplified their longer pieces i was accustomed to reading in salon and the nation, but nothing in their various tweets struck me as significantly more valuable than what i was accustomed to following on the more traditional sites...
that all changed with the events in tunisia and egypt... what i am experiencing now is the full-blown immediacy of being on the front lines of a major world event in a way that the traditional news media or even the alternative internet news media couldn't possibly deliver... reading the tweets from sharifkouddous, a native egyptian who is tweeting and broadcasting live for democracy now from cairo adds a three-dimensionality to the goings-on that is breathtaking... i now see "social networking," at least the twitter variety, from a completely new perspective and i'm in awe of its power...
ok... i'm a convert...
Labels: Democracy Now, egypt, emptywheel, Facebook, Glenn Greenwald, Greg Mitchell, Salon, Sharif Kouddous, social networking, The Nation, Tunisia, Twitter
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posted by profmarcus at
1/31/2011
