New fangled stuff

Social media. What a silly phrase but it is here and one bit of it has made a bloke a billionaire well before his thirtieth birthday. That's not a bad effort, you have to admit. Even Woods T. was past thirty before he hit the mark and then rather publicly gave a good deal of it away to her who was once Mrs Woods. There must be something in this social media stuff if it generates so much dosh although I probably shouldn't argue with anyone who thinks the first half of this sentence is an oxymoron.

I like to think of myself as reasonably technologically up to date and I suppose I had better dip my toe into this social media world. Prior to the exercise I am a little apprehensive when reflecting that I appear to be about thirty five years too old, don't have acne and only occasionally eat pizza. Never mind, you are as old as you feel or something. Now what have we got? It would appear that the only men left standing after the initial shakeout are Facebook and Twitter. I am led to believe that there were (are) others, but the likes of Bebo and My Space have gone the way of gas lamps and hansome cabs.

There are in fact hundreds of social network sites, lots with specialty interests. Join up to Care2 if green living and social activism is your bent. I don't think so. Thought of joining Cloob? I thought not, but it is apparently all the go in Iran; bet its a real barrel of laughs. Fetlife for people into BDSM; perhaps not this, is a family blog. GovLoop? 'For people in and around government' - the fact that they are all loopy is preordained by their group appellation. If you are Mongolian and want new friends in Jamaica (must happen a lot) then hi5 is the site for you. This site is not very popular in the USA which must cause great angst on the steppes. 743,930 people have joined Ravelry because of their interest in knitting and crochet.

If you think that is a lot of balls of wool then the numbers for some of the other networks are crazy. Habbo. Never heard of it? Nor me. A general site for teens with just the 20 million members. Geni.com is a site for amateur genealogists and there's 15 million of them. Fruhstuckstreff has not been quite such a runaway success. Founded in 2001 it still only has 14,800 members. I have no idea what they do but they meet in a phone box outside the Dog and Fox on the third Thursday of the month.

If we are talking numbers though, Facebook is le grand fromage; just the 640 million close friends with numbers growing by the minute - literally. So I'll start my foray into this world at the top and I'll join Facebook. Pay me money ($0.00) and I'm in. What I want to do is use this as free advertising for my rather puny little game fishing lure selling business. All the big companies have Facebook pages so I'll soon be up there with Melton's. Not so fast. I cannot have a business page without first having a personal page. I don't want a personal page but I can't find a combination of key strokes that will get me around this road block. OK, I make this damned personal page and then make the business page. I am told to write on my 'Wall'. Eh? I am having a bad feeling about this already. The connection with aerosol cans and those unreadable words along every spare square inch of every railway line in the UK is inescapable. I then have to send requests to people I don't know but might have similar interests for them to be 'friends'. And then they become friends and they suggest me to others of their friends and so on. It is an electronic chain letter cum Ponzi scheme.

I have had a Facebook account for just over a year now and I can confidently say I hate it. The Lure Company has hundreds of 'friends' who are anything but. They are just names who have avatars of big boats or big fish. They do nothing but sit in the ether as an invisible cloud of potential but ultimately nonexistent customers. The have bought nothing. One of them wished me happy birthday last year. I don't know him (or her) and I am fairly confident the felicitations were an automated response from his computer rather than from my new best mate in Peurto Rico (for that is from where the greetings originated). I can't get into the Facebook culture at all. I have a good mate who plays Farmville which is a Facebook based game thing. I looked over his shoulder whilst he planted crops and bought chooks and stuff. It looked very silly; and it cost money. No, Facebook can get nicked.

So it was with a very heavy heart that I, two weeks ago, signed up with Twitter for the same princely entrance fee. The idea was to try and increase readership of this Blog. Facebook and Twitter are the same, are they not, with the only difference being that you only have to write 140 characters? Twitter is Facebook for those with a short attention span or no ideas? Well, no. I have been pleasantly surprised by Twitter and actually think it is quite good. I no longer much care if it increases my Blog readership or not as I am enjoying it in its own right.

What I really find useful is that you can use it as a RSS feeder. Be careful who you follow and you can effortlessly keep abreast of breaking news on anything you fancy. And, this is very important, not keep abreast of stuff you have no interest in whatsoever. I am currently only following 31 things and have just the 18 following me. The BBC has me and 842,882 other people following their efforts - but they are the BBC and can handle that sort of traffic. I have written (in 140 characters or less, of course) to each of the 18 people who have taken enough interest to tick me as worthy of a follow pretty much out of common courtesy. I follow the BBC, the NZ Herald, Air New Zealand, Cricinfo, a couple of blokes who dish out news on Mac stuff, a couple of people who post stuff about Jaguar cars, the Dalai Lama (two million follow his Tweets and he follows no one; appropriately classy) and that is about it for the moment. I can add to or subtract from that list as the pleasure takes me.

Conclusion? Facebook is horrible and 640 million people are wrong. Twitter is good and I am right.

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