How’s everyone doing? I trust that you’re succeeding in implementing your New Year’s changes. I’m doing pretty well with my exercise change. I’ve begun walking at work, during breaks and lunch. I just have to keep it up. Well, for my first blog of the New Year I thought that I’d share with you my thoughts on facebook and some dos and don’ts for using this wildly popular social site.
It’s funny, I remember what it was like before all this twittering and facebooking began. One of the first social communication programs was Prodigy. I can remember my excitement when logging on and connecting. Back then, we used a dial-up connection, and sometimes you couldn’t even get the “handshake” to say that you’d actually connected. Logging on to Prodigy took forever, but it was fun once I got on. It was great to talk to random people out in the world. I loved it! Then AOL came along. I had such thrilling conversations with folks all over the place. It was new and exciting, but the cost per hr was daunting. I remember once my husband ran up a monthly bill of over 300 dollars. Crazy! Then other social sites came about, MySpace and so forth.
I had no desire to set up a MySpace account. It seemed to me as though that type of thing was far too intrusive, and it looked like there were a lot of teeny boppers on there. For a while I resisted Facebook, for the same reasons. I didn’t want to “put myself out there” so to speak. Well, 5 years later, I decided to create an account. One of my sisters had an account and suggested that I set up one too. I found that it is actually a great way to share pictures, and events etc. with family and friends. It was fun, and then I really began to get into it. I looked up old school friends from high school and college. It was exciting to reconnect with old friends and to see how their lives had progressed.
I sent friend requests to people that I hadn’t spoken to in years. Oh BTW, just because your friend request has not been acted upon, doesn’t mean that you’re being ignored. Sometimes, people really don’t login to Facebook on the regular. One of my friends is rarely on except to check the accounts of his teens. Initially, I was hurt when a friend request wasn’t accepted. I got over that, you see I’ve found that if a request isn’t accepted it may be because the request has not been seen. However, sometimes…. Well, there have been requests that I’ve ignored, and who knows, maybe one or two have ignored me.
One lady, who had never really been my friend, sent me a request. Not only was she not my friend, she was one of my husband’s uh “dalliances” from back in the day. So you know that I wasn’t accepting her friend request! I have less than a hundred friends. That brings me to another topic, the number of friends one has. Why is it that some folks have thousands of friends on facebook? How is that advantageous? First of all I don’t need that many people in my business. Everyone that is a friend of mine on facebook is actually someone whom I’ve known well over the years, specifically family and friends. I can honestly say that there is only one person on my Facebook page that I don’t really know well. I kinda met her on Facebook through my brother in law. I’ve failed to mention that there are also those who use facebook to further their careers in entertainment and other areas, and that’s cool, but they also have to manage their accounts. You just never know who you’re letting into your world (Can you say Stalker?) Just one more reason not to accept all friend requests!
I do not “friend” folks just because I know them. Like I’ve said before everyone is not my friend, nothing personal. Sometimes though, I don’t friend people because I don’t want to mix my worlds. Work folks don’t need to look at my backyard barbeque pictures and so forth and so on. I’m just sayin….the two worlds don’t need to mix, which brings me to my next point. Don’t put anything on Facebook that is questionable.
If you happen to have outspoken friends with strong opinions that may offend, caution them about posting those opinions to your wall. If you think that the picture of you holding a bottle of liquor in each hand is cute, think again. Did you know that sometimes employers check Facebook? I don't think that they should, but they do. That's why I only friend those that I know. It’s amazing the information that folks put out there for total strangers to see. You dirty dancing with a stripper may not be something that everyone needs to see. Despite the fact that Facebook has become a window to our personal worlds, we still have power over it. We can decide what and what not to share.
I’ve noticed that some people use Facebook as a personal journal. Some use it as a way to look at themselves, picture after picture, after narcissistic picture. .. sorry… anyhoo, to each his own. Oh and to any of you who find that a particular friend (oft times a youngster) seems to always pop up with mindless silliness that you don’t care to see, use the hide feature. He or she will still be one of your friends, but you will not have to see all of the sometimes meaningless statements about any and everything. I find this helpful when dealing with my teen friends. They are good kids, bless their lil hearts; it’s just that I’m not real interested in talk about Justin Beiber and I don’t really have a burning desire to see the “Teach me how to Dougy,” video.
Facebook can be fun, but one still needs to manage it responsibly. I love the new technology, yet I still like being able to pick up the phone to reach out and touch someone. Texting can be expressive, but there is nothing like sharing a laugh out loud, or hearing the happiness in another’s voice. Smiley faces are nice, but the human voice can convey such rich emotion. I’m just sayin….I’ve even seen some of my teen nieces and nephews text each other across the room, come on now really. Can’t we talk? The times, they are a changing.
One last little thing, you don’t have to put all of the specifics about you in your profile. You can omit anything that you’d like. For instance, for your date of birth, using the month and day is perfectly acceptable. If you want someone to know how old you are, you can tell them. Do take time to check out the account settings. Well, I can tell you that Facebook is a good thing if used sensibly, and I’m very fortunate to have the opportunity to share my blog with you through Facebook. Until the next time, stay safe and warm. Peace Out!
