Skip to main content

Follow Friday: Getting Social

This week's Follow Friday arrives with only a few hours to spare. I will blame the heat.

If you do not live somewhere that the weather reached 100+ today, consider yourself blessed. 

This week we're going to talk about social media. I'm sure many of you have heard about Google's new platform, Google+ (or G+ for short).  I've been checking it out for about two weeks now so I'm going to offer my perspective on the newest Internet time-suck. 

My first reaction when I heard about G+ was that I wasn't interested. I already spent plenty of time using Twitter and Facebook and it seemed that another distraction was the last thing I needed in my life. I never used the now defunct MySpace.  I've experimented with other social portals such as Foursquare, GetGlue, and LinkedIn. None of those seem to be worth a great deal of my time. After about a week of buzz, though, my curiousity was piqued about G+. I asked for an invite from a friend and joined the nerd herd.

Admittedly, the platform is still in Beta, which means they are testing features and rolling out new capabilities all the time. I like the fact that I can sort my "friends" into circles and then decide who gets to see each bit of information, from the posts that I share to personal bits of info like my occupation, location, or resume.  Some people have pointed out that this customization is available on Facebook as well but I find Facebook's privatization and group settings to be cumbersome and difficult to understand.

Another thing that I like about G+ is that it's like an expanded version of Twitter. On Twitter, you can follow people and they don't have to follow you back. In a similar way, you can put people in your circles but they don't have to reciprocate. I have one circle labeled "Bloggers and Internet Friends" where I have put many folks that I only know virtually.  I also have a circle called "New and Info" where I follow lots of editors at news organizations such as Mashable, Huffington Post, NBC, CNN, and NPR.  There are lots of Google employees on G+ as well (of course) and they are a great source of information on the latest updates to the platform.  There has been a lot of information on the Huffington Post lately with guides on who to follow, how G+ works, and the latest updates and changes.  Unlike Twitter, it's easier to have a "conversation" with people once they post and you aren't limited to 140 characters.

Another interesting part of G+ is the Sparks area. Sparks are customized news feeds based on personal interests. I have sparks for Mad Men, movies, nonprofit news, and a few for some bands and musicians that I follow. The sparks pull current news and information from the web that you can read (and then possibly share with your G+ circles).  The problem I'm having is that I love to read and I soak up information like a sponge. That's where the addiction comes in.  Some people spend hours on the Internet playing Farmville. I spend my time reading my RSS subscriptions.

Finally, the biggest advantage I see of G+ over Facebook is reducing the noise factor. Lately, I have found myself just skimming my Facebook news feeds. I already hide games and silly applications such as "Madame Price's Fortune of the Day" or the inane hearts and flowers that people share on each other's walls.  On G+ you don't seem to find a lot of meaningless verbage ("I'm making a peanut butter sandwich right now!") or blind copy/paste syndrome ("If you believe that we should only eat red fruits for 3 hours a day while standing on our heads, copy and re-post this on your Facebook wall. Only my REAL friends will do this.")  Sorry, folks, but I find that really annoying. Facebook seems to be full of this type of chatter these days and I'm trying to tune it out.

I found one of the best comparisons of Facebook and G+ in my news feed today and I think this about sums it up. 


 If you are on Google+, please add me to one of your circles (even if it's the Really Annoying Blogger Chicks circle). If you'd like an invite, send me a note from your gmail account and I'll send you an invitation.  I don't think Google+ is for everyone but for now, I think I'm diggin' it. Happy surfing.  
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The Edge of Seventeen

It's that time of year when the blog musings center on my grief journey. Every year, it seems like we are busy with end-of-the-year school activities and the start of summer, planning vacations, and then (kablam)...it's almost July 9.  Grief is funny. Grief is weird. I remember very early after Charlotte died, I watched the movie Rabbit Hole.  There's an amazingly poignant scene where Nicole Kidman's character is talking with another woman who lost a child over 10 years before (played by Dianne Wiest). She talks about grief being like a brick in your pocket. It never goes away. Sometimes you can even forget it's there. But it comes back and makes its presence known from time to time. And (she says) "it's what you have of them."    I probably did not fully realize then what a powerful and true analogy that is. As time goes on, our grief changes. Yet, it is always there on the edge of things. It sits in that pocket and sometimes makes itself known.  This
Read more

Bittersweet Sixteen

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen.  If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life.  I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into
Read more

Tis the Season for Leaks

Now that we've had a few posts to settle in with one another, let's get personal, shall we?   It's almost an understatement to say that this has been a difficult year.  The last few weeks, especially, brought back a flood of memories.  This time last year, we were in the home stretch .   We were watching our daughter die.  I have spent the weeks since Thanksgiving thinking of our final days with her.  I miss her terribly.  I miss her laugh and her smile and her stories.  I cry a lot.   This is going to sound funny but I don't cry the way I used too.  In the past, if I got upset, you would KNOW that I was upset.  Now, it just kind of leaks out.  I'll be sitting somewhere: waiting in line at the store, working, driving in my car....and the tears just start to flow.  I don't even necessarily "break down" and sob.  I just leak.   Anything can trigger the leak.  Usually it's a memory of Charlotte.  Sometimes I'm reminded of a child or a family i
Read more