Life in the World of Social Networking

I don't know how people do it. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook - all technologies I'm just starting to use and already I wonder how people manage to keep up. I find it difficult to complete all of the things I had to do before I signed in to Web 2.0.

Maybe I make too many things into big productions. I haven't yet learned to tweet as things go on around me. I find that I have to make a conscious effort and plan out what I want to say. I'm the same way with other, less technical projects, too. I sometimes have trouble starting a task because I am unable to work out how I might finish it. My rough drafts are generally very close to a final copy because I wouldn't start until I had most of it written in my head. I don't like to make mistakes, and a scratch out in raw notes or a rough outline may cause me to toss it out and start over. That's probably just a bit obsessive.

Another stumbling block for me is that I feel that I need something I consider important to relate. I wonder why people care about what I'm doing right now. I suspect that reflects a certain amount of insecurity. Perhaps I shouldn't care so much about whether others care about what I'm doing.

I think the secret to successful social networking may be in finding ways to capture casual comments and observations as they happen in the same way that you might point something out to a friend who is physically with you at the time. Just as some people keep idea notebooks handy to jot down those sparks of inspiration that occur when least expected, others have their mobile phones ready to tell the world what's going on. Also, when you're with a friend, you often say whatever pops into your head. It may be irrelevant or unimportant or even something really weird, but it might start a conversation, a debate, or some other kind of personal interaction. That's probably part of the purpose behind social networking initiatives - allowing people to interrelate despite spatial separation in ways that resemble what's possible with colocation.