Social Networking

First, let me see if this works. Yes, it does.

Okay, now that we have gotten that out of the way--that being the ability to copy and paste from my PageFour application directly into my blog here. The question arises because I can't copy/paste from my OpenOffice application into my blog. And while I can use MS Word and actually publish directly from that application, I am using a sadly outdate version that is, to say the least, not doing a lot of the things I need it to do; such as cooperate with others who have much newer versions. Backwards compatibility, it seems, is a thing of the past. Updating is too expensive. Hence, OpenOffice. PageFour is a whole other app--that I have learned to use and really like! And then there's the question of security issues that MS does not cover with such an outdated program. Ah, the vicissitudes of life...

[False alarm: It will only copy/past one sentence at a time. Drat! The workaround: copy from here, paste to a Word doc, copy from Word, paste to blog. Life should not be so complicated.]

At any rate, today's subject will tackle, for me, social networking sites. There are many! A few of the ones I belong to: Ning, MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook. Not to mention all the other places I've joined where there are group forums, such as Goodreads, NaNoWriMo, Duotrope, Sampa, Flickr, etc. (That's just a drop in the bucket!) Are we humans joiners by nature?

Each of these applications seems to have its own jargon, though many of them share commonalities. It's hard to keep up these days. My experience has been: First, there was Myspace, which everyone invited me to. Then, Twitter, Ning, and Facebook. I'm not sure if that was the order in which they came into being. I am only sure that it is the order in which I was invited to join (according to my best recollection).

So, am I getting tweets from twits? Not so much, these days. Nor am I getting much action from Myspace. Not since Facebook, at any rate. As for the twitters; as I said, those are pretty sparse. I mean, the tweets from the twits. Is that actually what people who use Twitter are called? It seems like it should be, since it is easier than calling someone a Twitterer. That sounds like a stutter. Come to think of it, if someone sends you the same tweet a dozen times in a row, would that be a twutter? And I don't think my friends on Twitter are twits, though they may think that of me from time to time. And when do you actually capitalize these words? Is it Twits or twits? Should it be Tweets or tweets? Is it Twick or Tweat? No, wait! That's still several weeks away.

According to WordWeb, another very handy application, though not social, a twit is: a noun; 1. Someone who is regarded as contemptible, or 2. Aggravation by deriding or mocking or criticizing. Then we have the verb usage: twit (twitted, twitting) meaning to harass with persistent criticism or carping.

Back in the olden days, before twitter/Twitter, a friend who was also a twit would have been annoying indeed. I mean, we've all had the experience, right? The constant harassment, criticism, and carping away at us until we wanted to punch them one? But I don't currently see my friends who twit me as being annoying or harassing in any way. The occasional "B rite bak, gotta use the potty!" or the "I've had my 3rd cuppa 2day and am now ready 4 action." did get a bit lame at times. Sort of in the category of TMI (Too Much Information!), if you know what I mean. But most of my friends are pretty level-headed folks not given to info-overload. So I don't consider them to be twits in the least, even though they do twitter.

We've turned google into a verb these days: "I'm going to google that and see what I find." or "I'm googling that review even as we speak." come to mind. Does that mean that when I interact on Facebook or Myspace that I am facebooking? myspacing? Does that make Ning, ninging? And what if you get stuck with that one, like a broken record??? You could be ninginginginging.... all the day long.

And why do we join so many groups? It's like jumping ship these days. First one app comes along. We like it! We send invites to every person who has ever come through our e-mail inbox--whether we remember them or not. A revolution starts. People come pouring in to this new and shiny site in droves. Ah, we have established contact. We have lift off! The site hits the airwaves, television and radio pick it up and talk about "the latest social networking trend" and we all, if we haven't already been invited by at least a dozen or more contacts, decide to give it a look. We join, we make connections, we love it! Pretty soon we aren't seeing much action on our other social networking sites. Everyone has abandoned ship and taken up with the life raft. So be it. Another day, another trend. Is there no loyalty in the world? And trying to keep up with all those networks we've joined will be interesting, to say the least.

Let me tell you--it can be done. If you are willing to put the rest of your life on hold. If you are willing to quit your job, ignore your family... But, hey!, they are all twitterfacebookmyspaceninging, too. No problem. Just add them to my ever-growing list of friends/contacts and I can tell them when dinner is happening. "We r dinnering 2nite @ approx 7pm after I get dun w/my tweets." Since I am using all apps at all times, then I am not being disloyal in the least. And the apps nowadays are almost all interlinked in some mysterious fashion so, when you post to one, it may broadcast to the others. At least, that's the way I think it works. I really don't keep up with all the others much of the time. Like most others, I tend to go where my peeps are.

And look at all these people I haven't heard from in years! Everyone of them here--together at last. Sighing in bliss, we tweet to our heart's content. Until we remember that the class bully whom we just 'friended' was not our friend. And our exes found us through friends of friends of friends. And it really bites to have a BFF paint all your secrets on their walls! Yeah, there are down-sides to all this social networking. I won't even go into all the political gaffs out there. Must exercise caution, perhaps?

Gotta jam, my twits are waiting!