an enriching experience

I just had a really good experience tonight and wanted to share it with you.

I have mentioned here before how much I love Twitter and the Thursday night #knitchat that has been running every week for more than a year now. #knitchat began with Natalie from the Cloudy with a Chance of Fiber podcast, and her co-host Rachel (who recently gave birth to a son) is often an active participant.

During this year of being a part of the #knitchat community, I have made some pretty great Twitter friends, I feel like if/when I actually meet these people in person that it will be just like old times, like no time had past, as if we've been friends forever.

Natalie is a self-proclaimed tech geek (you did say that once, right?). She works in tech, so is always in the know about cutting edge technologies, especially when it comes to social media. A few days ago when I suggested that we have a "weaving in ends" party (note for non-knitters: when you are finished knitting a project, there are always tails of yarn that need to be woven into the fabric) for all our Christmas gifts. Natalie made it happen. She opened up a discussion thread in Ravelry, gave us the link with information on how to set it up, and announced to Twitter when it would be.

It was my first time with using Google Hangout, and I think you have to be logged into Google+ for it to work. I haven't been using Google+ very much (though I signed up for it a few months ago on Natalie's advice) but Google Hangout is a very powerful tool. It's like Skyping with nine of your best friends. Or up to nine - I guess there is a limit of 10 people, but tonight there were only three of us.

Natalie beckoned me on Twitter to come a bit earlier, to make sure it worked. After some fussing with my computer, I was able to hear Natalie and she could hear me! We talked about our knitting (and I confessed I had no ends to weave in because I was compelled to wrap all my Christmas gifts today, hence the ends were done already). I am very familiar with Natalie's voice because I listen to her podcast - but none of my Internet friends had heard the voice of yarnsalad until tonight. :-) 

It was great. I blog, Tweet, and post on Ravelry and Facebook, but of course what you read here is the cleaned up version. I have to be politic about what I write so as not to offend anyone or air any dirty laundry. With Google Hangout I was able to have a fairly intimate conversation with someone I have long considered my friend, but with whom I had never had a discussion with until tonight.

Maia joined us after about half an hour, and there was some interesting conversation about yarn shops (in Portland, Northern California, and Victoria), some TV shows I will have to see when Dan and I get Netflix (he doesn't know we're doing this yet, but we are). We talked about the #knitchat KAL (knit-a-long). By the way - if you want to participate and haven't voted, you should TOTALLY go vote for Nathan's Scale Mitts. They would be a quick easy knit to do, in a worsted or aran yarn. Another pattern is leading the polls right now, but it has a dumb name and even though it's pretty, I feel a special allegiance to Nathan, who has long been a participant on #knitchat and is also a dear friend I've never met.

Sam got to participate in this hangout too. She was sleeping, but I got her up, held her in front of my webcam, then put her back on the bed. She wasn't really interested.

the whole point of having a blog

In my case, one of the reasons I keep a blog is to keep you, my readers, informed of what is going on. Sometimes that turns out to be interesting random stuff, like picking rosehips from the side of Kennedy lake and turning them into a sauce for the duck to be roasted. Sometimes it's about the things we make. But lately, as my life has taken many turns and tumbles, it is really to keep you posted on what I'm up to and how I'm doing.

A long time ago there was a tradition of once-a-year form letters that people wrote & tucked into their Christmas cards. Then came the big blanket emails that some of us sent out to everyone, not wanting to repeat themselves or to save themselves the labour of writing out the same story 50 times over. For me, at this moment in my life, I bypass all that rigamarole and keep a blog. The Adventures of YarnSalad.  Some people check it regularly and each time I make a new post, I tweet it and post a link on Facebook.

I was very surprised then to hear that someone who follows me on Twitter and is also a Facebook friend only realized yesterday that I was back in town. I've been back for a month. With all the ways I go to great lengths to keep in touch with people, communication can still fail and I have to accept there is nothing I can do about that.

words that make no sense

I'm confused.

I really like the whole world of social media. Except by "social media" I really only mean Twitter and blogging.

I was on LinkedIn for a while but it really seemed like a big old popularity contest and I reaped no benefit from it, so I left. I hate Facebook and every day find more reasons to find it loathsome. I had it on my screen earlier today, walked away for a bit, then an audio ad - a commercial - started blaring out of my speakers and I had no idea what the heck was going on. I find that kind of assault SO offensive that I make every effort not to go to Facebook. And yet I have friends who only seem to interact with their Internet peeps that way.

What I will say for Facebook and LinkedIn, is that they are real words with real names and meanings.

But as social media programmers try to find the next new big thing, and as bending and reshaping words seems to be in vogue, even though the new words might not hold any meaning (yet), it seems that social media sites are popping up with new and confusing names.

Pinterest

Flattr

Plurk

Klout

Tumblr

Flickr

I listen to a lot of podcasts and engage with many people via social media and many of them use some of these other sites. Last night there was something really interesting happening with the Oakland police violence, and it was being documented on Tumblr, but I could not access it from the newly downloaded Tumblr app on my iPhone. Today somebody posted something on Plurk and, not wanting to be out of the loop, I signed up for a Plurk account.

It seems like some of these sites are trying to take over the domains where Twitter, Facebook and blogs have taken a deep-rooted hold long ago. It's just too many. I know that not everyone will come join me on Twitter (though I wish they would), but thankfully programmers have allowed some applications to be used in conjunction with their own. Case in point, my five most recent tweets show up here. I am glad of that! And just today I did a thing on Facebook where my tweets can show up there too. It will save me from ever having to log into Facebook again. That would be awesome.

Flattr me

Hi friends,

Have you heard of Flattr? It's this way of making small contributions to people who produce content you like. I listen to a lot of podcasts and read a few blogs, and even though we all do this because we love producing the content, it would be nice to have a bit of income from it. Podcasts sometimes help defray their production costs by sponsors or Donate buttons on their websites, blogs have the option of having advertising on their pages. I'm tossing around the idea of doing this also as I'm about to ramp up my blogging schedule (I'm not working, see, so why not bust my ass to create content?). I first heard about Flattr a few months ago and have been thinking about it for a while. Check it out. If you like my content and have a few cents to spare, why not join Flattr and help me out a bit?

Thanks! 

the point of social media

Today I will tell you about Twitter.

I'm on Twitter all the time, way more than I am on Facebook. It's been great for me as a way of keeping in touch with people I've met, meeting new people, and participating in online dialogue about any number of interesting topics.

Without going into too much detail, the company we moved here for (but my husband didn't end up with)  recently joined Twitter and, in my opinion, don't seem to get the point of it. Or realize that not only are they on the Internet, but when someone goes to Google the name of their company, these stupid Tweets will show up on the list.

Now if you have a business and are on Twitter and are using Twitter to promote said business, you want to be professional, relevant, interesting, and interested. But if you are Tweeting about how this whole 'work' thing is interfering with your surfing, how working on the weekend sucks (um hello, welcome to being a business owner), only talking about music and things entirely unrelated to your business, then your potential clients will lose interest fast. They may start to think "wow, these people are wholly uninterested in what the rest of the industry is doing". That's the impression I get. The ironic part of this story is that they were recently featured in a local newspaper article about business who are 'using social media'.

Um, Tweeting three times a month about asinine topics is not using social media, it's just embarrassing you and your company.