The Joys of Being Connected

Why I like Twitter & Facebook Friend Feed

At first Twitter seemed a bit silly to me. Mostly for students to send electronic notes and handy if there was an emergency that impacted many. It wasn’t grabbing my attention. But six months ago (or so), I joined Facebook and that was fun for a while. I played the games, took the surveys, wrote a couple of book reviews and tossed a few cows. And then that seemed a little silly too (though the cows were nice). My frustration with Facebook is that I wanted to add friends with my interests like I could in MySpace. But in MySpace I was getting all sorts of folks and well, some were more interesting to me than others.

I found my solution when I found the list of mostly women who had joined the AAUW Facebook group. In a fit of avoiding real work, I asked about ½ of them to be my new Facebook friend. Most said yes. Now this was more like it! Most of these women had interesting lives. I suspect if I got to know them in real life, they would be friends.

But the thing I really like and the reason I’m blogging is that I now follow all of my Facebook friends (my AAUW friends, my library friends, my real life friends that have Facebook and my family) via an RSS feed on my Google homepage. I also follow my Twitter friends that way. I love to see what everyone is doing. My friends are thoughtful, funny and very active. They are inspiring.

For example –

• · Kathryn hopes her words will not be used out of context
• · Virginia will be information-waitressing all day today.
• · Patty Heading out to Brookside Gardens to do some photography.
• · Carolyn is thinking about going to Folklife.
• · Laura is watching Jaws--again.
• · Nancy is getting set up for a computer-free weekend!
• · Laura is enjoying a lovely mango.
• · Patty Reading the new AAUW Report - Where the Girls Are - http://tinyurl.com/5g5zgs.
• · Bonnie says, what's wrong with regular space aliens?
• · Hayley is happy to have won back the money I lost the first night... plus $2!
• · Annabel is trying to browbeat herself into going to grocery.
• · Susan is thinking about what it would be like to work for C-SPAN.
• · Janet is wondering if her cousin is on Facebook.
• · Laura is being the homework police.
• · Kathryn is promising to Skype by Friday. Or Saturday. Definitely by Sunday.
• · Kate is now the public policy chair for her local AAUW branch

(This is part of one day’s feed)