On Social Media Etiquette

I would like to know who creates all these rules about what you should and should not post on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. I mean, I assume we all have some common sense and know how to use censorship not to make fools of ourselves (probably a wrong assumption), but what is so wrong with telling your friends where you are and what you’re doing. I haven’t seen any of that in the actual TOS of social media sites.

Last week I learned a new word, Twittiquette, which works OK for business-related social media, but leaves the day to day user feeling like his/her life has no transcendence. I quote:

Be interesting. There are far too many people who even if they aren’t tweeting about their diet or the weather are still amazingly boring. Remember, if you have nothing to say it is better to keep your mouth shut.

Sure, we all want to spice in our lives, but some days are just so normally boring. It doesn’t mean we should refrain ourselves from interacting online because we’re being 100% human, right?

Read the rest of this entry »

KC Twestival Charity Voting Open

The KC Twestival Local planning team has tallied the votes from the original list of 18 charities submitted for consideration for KC Twestival Local and we have narrowed down the final list to 6 Kansas City area charities. Now, we need you to submit your vote.

You can submit your vote at: http://kansascitytwestival.uservoice.com.

The entire community will have a say in which charity will receive 100% of the funds raised from this event. Only 1 will be selected.

Voting will be open until Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 11:59PM CST.

Tweet. Meet. Give.

I decided to join the KC Twestival team this year. Unfortunately, I could not make it to the first meeting this morning, but I made sure I sent my suggestions for a charity we can raise money for. One of our team members has put up a poll with several wonderful charities and non-profits. We have to pick one.

Please, give us your top 3 and help us decide. You have until Sunday. Thanks!

Can’t make it to BlogHer?

For those of us who aren’t joining the debauchery at the BlogHer Conference this year, a local blogger decided we should get together and toast ourselves here in KC!

So Thursday, July 23rd, at the Peanut in Overland Park – 127th & Metcalf, 6 to 9 or so. Feel free to forward the invitation to other blogger friends who may want to come!

Are Blogs Really Dying?

That is the question Bran is asking today, via Twitter. Long gone are the days when we communicated online using more than 140 characters. Call it Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Jaiku… our lives have become this series of short sentences updating our contacts on our whereabouts, activities and status.

Blogs have been around for what, probably 10 years? Mine has been around for 8. I have days when I don’t even look at it. In the past I felt guilty when days passed without an update. These days? Not so much. After all, I have Facebook and Twitter, which allows me to have almost-IRT contact. My question is, how insightful are social media sites? And how strong are the relationships we form with other people through them? Can you really tell how a person is doing from 5 posts on Twitter? Are we simply too busy to sit down and write about something in detail? Is the world moving so fast that we can’t say more than just a few words to people?

The death of blogging is not news. I remember reading an article about it not long ago, and if you do a quick search on Google, you will find quite a few. Maybe we got tired of of reading so much over the years, or maybe we just like the small-talk social media sites like Twitter provides us with.

Whatever the reason is, I need to post this on Twitter so people will know I wrote about it. ;-)