With a Q

Yes it sounds dirty...

I read this article this morning in the Wall Street Journal, which is odd...primarily because it was the Wall Street Journal, and decidedly paper-based. But anyhow, the author was writing about Facebook, social networking and all that jazz.

I learned a few things:

• I am an old fart since I am part of Generation X. Pish posh I say, come on, without us there wouldn't be any angst left around here!
• I need to read more old-fashioned stuff like articles and books sometimes
• ...and finally, I don't have much credibility as far as this "web 2.0" crap goes. "Why?" you may ask. I don't have many online followers...

So, I started out in the late nineties making websites. Since then I bounced aroud from dot-com to dot-com and finally landed comfortably in a higher-ed position running the online learning program. But part of this meant updating my swag: resume, CV, eportfolio...what have you. Once I started up in grad school and meeting other professionals I was compelled to throw myself out there on networking sites partly due to school assignments and partly because "everyone else is doing it."

So, after taking a puff of that joint I now have:

1. A Facebook profile: I don't know what to think of on this one. I has been great in the sense that it has allowed me to catch up with some long-lost friends, but most of the people that send me requests, I don't even know really. A lot of them are students of FIDM or prospective students looking for more information on how to join the network...but there isn't one yet. Most of the rest of the interactions involve electronic food fights and vampire attacks and movie quizzes. But hey, Diana likes it and she can check in on her niece. LC's my Facebook friend so it can't be all that bad :)
2. A Twitter account: This is actually addictive. Twitter lets you microblog in a way that you can post simple little random things about what you are doing right now. Sort of like IM but less intrusive and more subtle but reading Twitter posts shows an interesting worldwide stream-of-consciousness. The best part is that you can update your twitter stream through SMS, IM, Facebook, or just the twitter site. I just need more friends on Twitter...I guess they are called followers...feel free to join up and follow me if you'd like.
3. A profile on LinkedIn: This is a professional networking tool that is nice and comfortable for me since I can control how much information is out on there. People I work with, or have worked with in the past can build connections and maintain them using this tool. I never really paid much attention to this site in the past but I started digging and a lot of my colleagues and coworkers are on this site. I will need to add more to get my 2.0-credibility up.
4. A blog that mostly no one reads.
5. A very lonesome and bored SecondLife avatar named Snaggle Reinsch (basically a likeness of me at sixteen years old -- with wings). But this will change once I get around to downloading the application again.

So why all of this new web-2.0-angst now? I have been doing all of this in the past to suit my own interests: designing websites, learning interactions, logo designs, etc...all in a "I made this" mentality. But I have been been slowly incorporating other bits and pieces of interconnectedness here and there. The old adage of "Every idea has been thought of before" has now come full circle on the web and it is time for me to get out of the mode of developing in a bubble. I guess I am relearning everything now and trying to repurpose the tools that are already out there to suit how I live and work...but now also how I relate to others. It started with this blog really. Blogs are still intensely personal for the author, but the headlines are not only read from these pages, but indexed by Google, aggregated and distributed in 20 other formats out there. Not that I think anyone reads this, but they still are vomited out into the ether regardless for anyone to pick up. A vendor I work with for "work-school" (not "school-school") asked about my cat after Googling me and reading this blog...scary, but an ice-breaker nonetheless.

Are there new rules now? Not yet. "But who are my friends?," the WSJ article asks. I don't know, but if I can meet more people and network more, then I say "cool!" The psychology major in me asks how this will eventually trickle back into real life. Is this the updated form of exchanging business cards? How much information is too much? Why do people know more about my cat than me?

Remember my comment about how we Gen-Xers like to bring the angst? This paranoia about how much of myself to throw out there versus how many connections I have on these websites was made worse by watching this video below. I guess as long as there are playgrounds, there will always be someone in a van with dirty pictures and sticky candy canes. Not that I worry about ex-girlfriends stalking me (like I care) but still...