Posted in Rants on 28. Feb, 2011
I’ve always been a fairly sparse user of Facebook. I mainly like to keep my account running to keep in touch with a few specific people, even though I’ve “befriended” many.
When I first signed up for and started using Facebook, I was about 10 years removed from high school, so naturally the first friend flux was a bunch of people that I hadn’t heard from for about 10 years, since high school.
Then the coworkers also became friends. Then many family members started using it.
I got used to watching the daily life streams of people that I didn’t really think I’d ever be in contact with again in my lifetime. It’s weird stuff. There’s nothing more interesting or disturbing than following the daily drama of somebody you have not talked to or seen for several years since high school.
Now, these days, the daily dramatics from people of past times has given way to a much more commercialized stream of information. I’ve started to “like” many business for many reasons, and now whenever I log into Facebook I’m basically seeing a feed that consists of the following:
- Some people that I haven’t known for a long time posting pictures of their babies that I’ll never see.
- Some people that I haven’t known for a long time bitching about daily life.
- Lot’s of new blog posts and new article announcements from many online publications.
- Lot’s of commercial and promotional stuff from local businesses.
Logging into Facebook is kinda like going to a high school reunion sponsored by all the businesses that have enticed me to “like” them on Facebook.
These days when I log in, it’s becoming more and more overrun by businesses and people with commercial intent, it doesn’t seem so much to be the friendly gathering ground that it used to be.
The more that I think about this, I should start focusing on the people or organizations that I really do want to hear from. If I did this, I would:
- Only be be friends on Facebook with people I currently know or socialize with, and family members.
- Only follow the Minnesota Twins and bands that I like to keep up on.
Yeah, I might do that.
I’ve recently begun a new method in regards to how I approach my days. I have done this to keep myself more focused an on task for each area of business that I have to deal with daily.
What I like to do now includes printing a physical sheet of paper (oh no!). This is something that I’ve tried to avoid, printing anything on paper really, but it works out good for me in this instance.
What am I doing differently now?
I use a daily checklist.
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This is something that I have to remind myself about, quite often.
Exposure on the Web can be a race at times. It’s a race to get content online. It’s a race to get search engines to index and rank your content well. It’s a race to convert visitors into buyers. I could go on and on.
Within all these individual races that we participate in, with our Web properties, we need to think more like the Tortoise and less like the Hare.
Why?
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Wow, it’s actually nice outside today. No more snow. The sun is out. Very little wind. I was driving around with windows down. And yet due to being an Internet fiend I’m sitting here typing on my keyboard.
Ah yes, the life of an Internet user. I’m gonna type this fast so I can get back to standing on my not-so-awesome apartment balcony.
New Gmail security feature
Gmail recently added a new feature that allows it’s users to detect suspicious account activity. This I like.
Half the battle in regards to keeping online accounts secure is knowing who is accessing them, and this feature allows you to keep tabs on whether or not your account is being accessed where it’s supposed to be accessed.
Got somebody logging into your account from another country? A country that you’ve never visited in your life, much less accessed the Internet from? Gmail will tell you if it happens.
Are you taking yourself too seriously?
I think this is a question that every person should probably ask themselves, at least as far as the Internet is concerned, which is why I laughed when I read this.
However, I think that some of the points being made in that post are not actually so bad. Posing for a social media profile picture? Aren’t most people posing for pictures anyways, regardless of where it ends up?
I don’t think that it’s a bad thing for people to take themselves too seriously on the Internet, however. Many different approaches have worked for many different people with both good and bad results, for many things. I can’t just cut a solid line down the middle of that argument myself.
Retro web designs
Check out this list of retro and vintage web designs. There’s 50 sweet examples. This is appropriately titled as “inspiring”.
Retro web design isn’t cliche yet is it? I hope not, I still like it.
There’s just something cool about designs that play off styles of the past, they can have a haunting look and feel.
Closing note -
If I spent the last 5 minutes tweaking the heading sizes on this post, as opposed to spending only 10 minutes writing this, am I taking myself too seriously on the Internet?
