I can remember watching the television show “The O.C.” and one of the characters said, “I A9.com-ed him.” That phrase just does not have the same ring as, “I Googled him.” A good marketing ploy for a budding search engine to get their name out to a wide audience, but it never stuck the way Google has.
Now children are Facebooking and tweeting the days by on their phones. It has come to the point where phone companies are making their phones social media tools instead of just humdrum calling machines. It is not just because children are doing the tweeting, but companies have started major social media campaigns to reach a larger audience.
Natalie Moore tells us in her essay “Rule of Thumbs: Love in the Age of Texting” how much the technology revolution is changing the way we interact. “According to Barb Iverson, a professor of new media at Columbia College Chicago, the latest technology revolution means that there are now two kinds of people in the world: ‘digital immigrants’ and ‘digital natives’…The digital natives instinctively emote through their thumbs and don’t consider a relationship ‘official’ until their Facebook or MySpace profile says it is.”
I went to a lunch meeting with my brother recently and he said he was inviting friends. I thought he meant friends I knew. As it turns out, this was a social media gathering and I was instantly thrust into the world of Twitter, again.
I had a Twitter account, but I had quit using it. I found very similar to Facebook but without all the pizzazz. I quit updating it because I was posting the same thing to Facebook.
At the meeting, I was seated next to a lovely woman who introduced herself as Meg Canada. I thought she was kidding, but she was really introducing herself as @MegCanada - her Twitter username.
As we continued talking she asked if I had used Twitter and what my username was.
I promptly responded, “I’m a Twitter quitter.” That was all I could say. I had not tweeted in months.
I had been called out as a social media faker!
Luckily, my brother jumped in to my rescue. He had invited me to develop some professional contacts in the social media world where I could put some of my other talents to use. If he had not been there I am sure a flurry of tweets and punches would have flown.
People are basing their interactions with others on how many followers or fans they have. It has become so “important” to be on these social networking sites.
When I go out and meet new people the best way to get a scope of who they are is by asking, “Do you Facebook?” If they do I can go home and Facebook-stalk them. That way I get a good look into their personal life. I can tell you from looking at their status updates if they will be appropriate friends, or if I should just write them off as just somebody I met once.
The way society has become so dependent upon social media as a probe into our personal lives has become somewhat annoying. I am just glad I can call this essay finished so I can tweet to all my friends I am done with homework and ready to harvest my Farmville crops.
